Shanghai’s Hasten Seals $322 Million Acquisition of Takeda Drugs

Shanghai-based Hasten Biopharmaceutic has announced that it has acquired five cardiovascular and metabolism drugs from Japan’s Takeda, with the intent of marketing them in China. The deal, worth $322 million, was struck back in 2020 when Takeda was busy shedding non-core assets following its $59 billion buyout of Ireland-based Shire. 

The five drugs in the deal include Ebrantil, a medicine for hypertension, Edarbi, Basen, Blopress and Actos. Sales of the drugs reached $109.5 million in 2019. Staff related to drug sales will be transferred to Hasten; Takeda will continue to produce and supply the products to Hasten. 

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Backed by CBC

Hasten’s history is fairly recent – the biopharma was founded in September 2020 and funded by CBC Group, a healthcare-focused investment firm, Hefei Industry Investment Group, and the Feidong County of the Chinese city of Hefei. 

“This acquisition helps us further our purpose of building a best-in-class primary care platform in Asia,” Wei Fu, CEO of CBC, said. “CBC has an excellent track record of building next-generation healthcare companies with our unique investor-operator strategy.” CBC will continue to develop its portfolio companies to bring treatments to chronic disease patients, said Fu.  

Shire Buy Proves to be a Tough Pill to Swallow 

Takeda has been restructuring its portfolio since buying Shire in 2019. Back then, the Japanese drug giant had laid out plans to narrow its specialty areas to gastroenterology, rare disease, oncology, neuroscience and plasma-derived therapies – and offload up to $10 billion worth of non-core products to other companies. 

So far, the Shire acquisition has been a tough pill for Takeda to swallow. The drugmaker recently let go of an asset it had trumpeted as one of the jewels of the Shire takeover to a fresh rare disease company called Oak Hill Bio. That candidate – a recombinant insulin-like growth factor -1 (IGF-1) called OHB-607 – had reached Phase 2 studies and was indicated to treat complications of premature births. 

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Joy Lin

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