AstraZeneca says it’s agreed to acquire a majority stake in Acerta Pharma.
The pharmaceutical giant, a major employer in the Wilmington area, announced the deal Thursday morning. It gives the company access to a new kind of blood cancer drug, acalabrutinib.Under the deal, AstraZeneca is buying 55 percent of Acerta for 2.5 billion dollars upfront and 1.5 billion dollars when acalabrutinib receives its first regulatory approval or by the end of 2018 - whichever comes first.
The deal also offers AstraZeneca the option to acquire the remaining 45 percent of Acerta under certain conditions.
AstraZeneca turned down a takeover bid by Pfizer last year worth $19 billion.
This move by AstraZeneca is the second major deal this month by a big company with a footprint in Delaware.
Last week, DuPont announced it plans to merge with Michigan-based Dow Chemical in a deal worth $130 billion and will begin laying off around 10 percent of its workforce by next spring. DuPont employs 7,000 people in Wilmington.
Like DuPont, AstraZeneca’s footprint in Delaware has been shrinking in recent years. About 12 hundred jobs were cut or moved from Wilmington in 2013 and the News Journal reports it trimmed another 50 last month. The company also sold the 58-acre south campus of its North American headquarters in Fairfax to JPMorgan Chase in May 2014.