Astellas agreed to acquire Nasdaq-listed Iveric Bio for $40 a share in cash, valuing it at about $5.9 billion. Iveric's lead drug, avacincaptad pegol, targets geographic atrophy, a form of age-related macular degeneration that can cause blindness. The deal was financed partly with a loan backed by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation. The deal Astellas agreed in late April 2023 to pay $40 a share in cash for Iveric Bio, an eye-disease drug developer based in Parsippany, New Jersey. The deal closed on July 11, 2023. To help pay for it, Astellas's US holding company signed a loan of about $1.9 billion in September 2023, of which the Japan Bank for International Cooperation provided up to $500 million and private banks the rest. The drug Iveric's lead drug, avacincaptad pegol, treats geographic atrophy, an advanced form of age-related macular degeneration with few treatments. The FDA approved it as Izervay on August 4, 2023, less than a month after closing. In November 2024 the FDA turned down a request to add two-year trial data to the label, a setback for sales. Why Astellas paid up Astellas faces the loss of patent protection on its top seller, the prostate cancer drug Xtandi, later in the decade. It was its fifth big overseas acquisition since 2019, aimed at adding drugs near approval to fill the gap.
