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Novartis Pharmaceuticals has entered into an agreement to acquire The Medicines Company, which is developing an experimental cholesterol-lowering drug called inclisiran, for $9.7 billion, according to a statement released Sunday (November 24). The merger comes two years after The Medicines Company founder Clive Meanwell announced that the company was selling assets and laying off most of its workers in order to focus solely on inclisiran, according to Bloomberg.
In the past few years, pharmaceutical companies have produced a class of drugs that lower cholesterol by inhibiting a protein called PCSK9 in a new attempt to reduce the risk of heart disease, the number one cause of death worldwide. Preventing the PCSK9 protein from being produced makes the liver better able to remove low-density lipoprotein, associated with heart attack and stroke, from the blood. An antibody drug produced by the pharmaceutical company Amgen that acts on ...
