Consumer and union groups call on FTC to ‘challenge’ Novo-Catalent deal

The tem­per­a­ture is heat­ing up around No­vo Hold­ings’ ac­qui­si­tion of con­tract man­u­fac­tur­er Catal­ent, as con­sumer and union groups write to the Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion to “chal­lenge” the deal, with a sec­ond let­ter in a week call­ing for the ac­qui­si­tion to be blocked.

Around 10 con­sumer groups and two la­bor unions wrote to FTC’s Chair Lina Khan warn­ing the deal will af­fect com­pe­ti­tion for weight loss and cell and gene ther­a­py drugs.

“We be­lieve this trans­ac­tion, if con­sum­mat­ed, would be harm­ful to com­pe­ti­tion across var­i­ous ther­a­peu­tic ar­eas and ul­ti­mate­ly re­duce pa­tients’ ac­cess to these vi­tal treat­ments,” the let­ter dat­ed Thurs­day and ad­dressed from for­mer FTC leader and at­tor­ney David Bal­to says.

The ac­qui­si­tion will see No­vo Hold­ings buy Catal­ent for $16.5 bil­lion, and then sell three of Catal­ent’s sites to No­vo Nordisk for $11 bil­lion. Catal­ent is a large CD­MO with over 50 fa­cil­i­ties, and has been mak­ing GLP-1s since 2017. It is one of few man­u­fac­tur­ers with the “spe­cial­ized” ca­pa­bil­i­ties need­ed to man­u­fac­ture GLP-1s, the let­ter states.

If the FTC green­lights the ac­qui­si­tion, it will re­move Catal­ent as an op­tion for oth­er com­pa­nies with GLP-1 as­sets. Phar­ma com­pa­nies like Am­gen, As­traZeneca, Pfiz­er, Roche, Struc­ture Ther­a­peu­tics, Sun Phar­ma and Viking Ther­a­peu­tics all have GLP-1 as­sets in their pipeline.

Not on­ly will the deal im­pact GLP-1 drug de­vel­op­ment, but oth­er as­sets like cell and gene ther­a­pies are al­so made at Catal­ent’s sites, in­clud­ing Sarep­ta’s Ele­v­idys and No­var­tis’ Zol­gens­ma.

The let­ter goes on to warn Catal­ent is like­ly to pri­or­i­tize No­vo’s drugs and could charge high­er prices and pro­vide worse cus­tomer ser­vice to No­vo’s com­peti­tors — Eli Lil­ly has al­ready voiced its con­cerns over the deal.

Fur­ther, the ac­qui­si­tion will al­low No­vo Nordisk to be privy to com­peti­tors’ man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es, a con­cern al­so voiced by Sen. Eliz­a­beth War­ren (D-MA).

Last week, War­ren wrote to the FTC seek­ing more scruti­ny of the ac­qui­si­tion, ar­gu­ing the deal will give No­vo an un­fair ad­van­tage in the GLP-1 mar­ket. Fur­ther, the FTC has al­ready re­quest­ed fur­ther in­for­ma­tion at least twice, in May and in April, on the No­vo-Catal­ent deal, push­ing back its de­ci­sion dead­line a month at a time.

“In our view, there is no ad­e­quate rem­e­dy that re­solves the com­pe­ti­tion con­cerns raised by this trans­ac­tion,” the lat­est let­ter con­cludes. It lists the fol­low­ing or­ga­ni­za­tions as sign­ers: Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of State, Coun­ty and Mu­nic­i­pal Em­ploy­ees (AF­SCME), Be­ta Cell Ac­tion, Con­sumer Ac­tion, Doc­tors for Amer­i­ca, Ser­vice Em­ploy­ees In­ter­na­tion­al Union, So­cial Se­cu­ri­ty Works, US Pub­lic In­ter­est Re­search Group, Cit­i­zen Ac­tion/Illi­nois, Gen­er­a­tion Pa­tient, Health Care Voic­es, Pop­u­lar Democ­ra­cy and Salud y Far­ma­cos, US.