Drug royalty sale brings $1.3 billion

Abstract

The UK medical research charity LifeArc has sold most of its royalty rights for the antibody pembrolizumab to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board for $1.3 billion. LifeArc got the royalty for helping develop the antibody with Organon, which Merck & Co. later acquired. Pembrolizumab, now marketed by Merck as Keytruda, brought in sales of $7.2 billion last year. LifeArc chairman John Stageman describes the deal as “a once-in-a-generation opportunity.”