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Bluebird organic Will sell for around 30 million US dollars to private -equity companies Carlyle and SK Capital, said the company on Friday and marked the end of the fall of the Bluebird from one of the most thorough biotech companies to one that was shortly before, no more money.
The shareholders of Bluebird receive $ 3 per share, with the gene therapies of Bluebird to achieve sales of $ 600 million in the amount of $ 600 million in a period of 12 months. The Bluebird shares were closed on Thursday at $ 7.04. They fell by 40%on Friday after the company announced the sale.
Bluebird has been at the head of the creation of unique treatments that promised to heal genetic diseases for more than thirty years. At one point, the market capitalization of Bluebird floated around 9 billion US dollars when investors bought the idea that the company could be successful with its genetic therapies. It has fallen below 41 million US dollars After the company was exposed to several scientific setbacks, separated its cancer work into another company and is in financial despair.
The turning point took place in 2018 when Bluebird developed the patient who received his gene therapy for sickle cell diseases. Bluebird concluded that his treatment did not lead to the condition, but the revelation started a number of questions that associated the security of its DNA-changing treatments.
Bluebird has also been passed by European payers after evaluating her gene therapy for beta thalassemia of blood diseases with 1.8 million US dollars per patient. The company withdrew the treatment from Europe in 2021, just two years after it was approved there. Bluebird said that instead it would concentrate on the USA, where Zynteglo for Beta -Thalassemia, Lyfgenia for sicklelle diseases and further therapy -skysona for a rare hirner disease called Cerebral -Adreno -ADRALEKodystrophy.
All three of these gene therapies have been approved in recent years, but none of them were able to facilitate the financial problems of Bluebird. The company had spent hundreds of million dollars a year. The outsourcing of Bluebird's cancer treatments into the new company 2 -Seventy Bio -Bio deposits also eliminated an important source of income.
For the last update in November, Bluebird said that his cash would finance the company's business activity into the first quarter of this year. The sale is a strong reversal of the past performance of Bluebird. The preliminary claim of around 30 million US dollars corresponds to a fraction of the former Chief Executive Officer from Bluebird in the amount of $ 80 million, Nick Lechly, which was made there from the company's sale of the company during his time.
And it contradicts the transformative results that most patients see with the treatments of the company. This reporter spoke to patients who desperately wanted to receive Zynteglo, as well as a 10-year-old girl who was lucky enough to become the first person in the United States after their approval.
The entire field is currently with difficult questions as to whether companies can implement the promise of unique treatments for rare diseases into viable companies. CrownThe competing gene therapy in sickle cell diseases, Casgevy saw a similarly slow start. Pfizer On Thursday, it announced that it would sell gene therapy for hemophilia that was only approved a year ago, citing weak demand.
The treatments of Bluebird could still change many lives. They were just not enough to change the fate of the company.
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