UK pharma giant GSK PLC is close to buying US biotech startup IDRx for $1 billion to boost its cancer drug business, the Financial Times has reported.
Backed by a raft of venture capital and private equity firms, the Plymouth, Massachusetts-based firm has been developing a treatment for gastrointestinal tumours.
IDRx was valued at $430 million when it raised cash last August.
IDRx was co-founded by serial biotech entrepreneurs Christoph Lengauer and Ben Auspitz, who was the founding CEO and has been involved in the funding and founding of more than 20 companies.
IDRx's focus is currently on its targeted therapy for gastrointestinal stromal tumour (GIST), using an initial product candidate, IDRX-42, which is a small molecule called a Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitor (TKI) designed to selectively target the mutations that drive the initial growth and proliferation of tumor cells.
The deal for GSK would follow its December agreement to pay up to $975 million to China's Duality Bio for the rights to an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) for gastrointestinal cancer, which was the FTSE 100 group's third ADC deal in the past year and a half.