Amarin shares jump 14% on rumors over Novartis interest

Shares of Amarin Corp (AMRN) gained up to 14% during the regular trading hours on Friday as rumors of an acquisition once again gained momentum. Though there has been no official confirmation, rumors have been taking rounds that Novartis (NVS) might be interested in acquiring the Dublin-based biopharma company.

A Novartis spokesperson told AlphaStreet that the company does not respond to rumors and market speculations.

Market observers feel Amarin’s fish oil drug Vascepa holds a lot of promise and Novartis’s buyout interest could be centered on this.

Last month, Amarin shares had jumped almost 20% after speculations emerged that Pfizer (PFE) was looking to acquire the company. However, there has been no further reports of the talks being successful.

In a clinical study conducted in September last year, Vascepa met its primary and secondary endpoints with around 25% relative risk reduction in the treated population. The test was conducted on about 8,200 patients suffering from cardiovascular diseases.

 READ: Two healthcare unicorns went public this week

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the Number 1 reason for deaths in the US and causes one death in every 38 seconds. Also, $555 billion is spent annually to treat CVD and this is expected to double within 20 years.

The pharma sector has recently been seeing some high-profile consolidations. This includes Bristol-Myers Squibb’s (BMY) acquisition of Celgene (CELG) in a $74-billion cash-and-stock deal, as well as Eli Lilly and Company’s (LLY) acquisition of Loxo Oncology (LOXO) for $8 billion.

Meanwhile, leading drugstore chain Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) is joining hands with Microsoft (MSFT) to create an ecosystem to digitize the main areas of healthcare delivery. The massive deal involves an array of Microsoft products, mainly Office 365, the Azure cloud division and AI-assisted technologies, which will serve customers at Walgreens stores across the world.

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