Dive Brief:

• Coherus Biosciences on Monday said it has agreed to sell its approved biosimilar Cimerli, along with supporting staff, to Sandoz for $170 million in cash.
• The deal will send to Sandoz, which in October spun out of Novartis as a standalone generic drugmaker, Cimerli’s license and product inventory as well as sales and reimbursement employees associated with the drug, which is approved in the U.S. as a copycat of the macular degeneration drug Lucentis.
• Formerly focused on biosimilars, Coherus has shifted toward development of its own cancer immunotherapies. The company now has a handful of experimental cancer drugs in its pipeline.

Dive Insight:

Coherus’ first big step toward oncology drug development came in 2021, when the company acquired the rights an experimental PD-1 inhibitor that it thought could compete versus other, similar drugs.

The drug gained Food and Drug Administration approval in October for the treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma, a cancer that occurs around the nose and throat. Coherus has, in the past couple of years, also acquired other potential treatments targeting IL-27, CCR8 and TIGIT proteins.

Divesting Cimerli gives Coherus needed cash to help fund its oncology plans. The drug is a biosimilar to Lucentis, a treatment for several retinal diseases that’s marketed by Roche and Novartis in different areas of the world. Cimerli is the only interchangable Lucentis biosimilar approved by the FDA for all uses, according to Sandoz. It was launched by Coherus in October 2022.

“Since entering the ophthalmology market in 2022, we have gained strong market share and created significant value in a non-core therapeutic area by leveraging our buy-and-bill commercial expertise,’ said Coherus CEO Denny Lanfear in a statement. “We believe it is prudent to now monetize these non-core assets to pay down debt, reduce interest costs, and take the opportunity to focus on our core therapeutic area, oncology.”

Lanfear also said the transaction will reduce overhead costs as well as decrease the number of staff.

The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2024.