Spark Therapeutics’ acquisition by Roche has been put on hold as the two companies agreed to extend the deadline for the Swiss drugmaker’s $4.3 billion takeover bid for the U.S. gene therapy specialist, according to Reuters. The report noted that Roche remains committed to a deal.
The new deadline for both companies to extend the merger agreement is now April 30, 2020, rather than Jan. 31, 2020, which provides more time to clear the transaction — the Federal Trade Commission as well as three pending lawsuits are to blame, Reuters says.
According to the report, Roche is buying Spark to get its one approved medicine, the $850,000 per patient hereditary blindness therapy Luxturna; another investigational gene therapy for hemophilia A, as well as its development platform, which Roche hopes to leverage into additional disease areas.
