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Neurocrine Grows in Endocrinology, Rare Disease with $2.9B Soleno Buyout

Published

2 months ago

April 7, 2026

Neurocrine Biosciences has agreed to acquire Soleno Therapeutics for $2.9 billion, the companies said, in a deal designed to bolster the buyer’s portfolio of marketed endocrinology and rare disease therapies.

“This transaction will advance Neurocrine’s mission to deliver life-changing treatments while accelerating our revenue growth and portfolio diversification strategy,” Kyle W. Gano, PhD, Neurocrine’s CEO, said in a statement.

The acquisition would bolster Neurocrine’s offerings to include three treatments that have already reached the market:

Crenessity^® (crinecerfont), a treatment of classic congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) due to 21-hydroxylase deficiency that received FDA approval in December 2024

Ingrezza^® (valbenazine), a vesicular monoamine transmitter 2 (VMAT2) drug approved in 2017 as a treatment for tardive dyskinesia and the chorea associated with Huntington’s disease
Vykat XR (diazoxide choline), approved last year as the first and only therapy indicated to treat hyperphagia in patients ages four and older with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS).

“Neurocrine is the right strategic partner to expand the reach of Vykat XR in the Prader-Willi syndrome community given their experience in endocrinology and rare disease and their proven ability to execute successful commercial launches,” stated Anish Bhatnagar, MD, Soleno’s chairman and CEO. “We are excited to accelerate Vykat XR’s impact for PWS patients following completion of the transaction by leveraging Neurocrine’s strong commercial capabilities.”

Soleno finished 2025 with $190.4 million in net revenue from sales of Vykat XR—including $91.7 million generated during the fourth quarter, pushing the company to profitability with positive net income of $20.9 million.

‘A little surprising’

Stifel analysts Paul Matteis and James Condulis called the planned acquisition “a little surprising” since Vykat XR is projected to garner approximately $400 million in annual net revenue, he commented in a note reported by Bloomberg News.

Vykat XR won FDA approval in March 2025. From then through December 31, 859 active patients were prescribed the drug by 630 unique prescribers (136 of them in Q4), while the company received 1,250 patient start forms (207 in Q4).

Neurocrine expects Vykat XR’s numbers to improve in coming years, since the drug is positioned as a foundational first-line therapy for PWS and is supported by a patent portfolio that is expected to protect the drug’s exclusivity into the mid-2040s.

Vykat XR would join Neurocrine’s marketed portfolio which includes Ingrezza and Crenessity. Ingrazza racked up blockbuster net revenue numbers of $2.51 billion up 9% year-over-year (including $657.5 million during Q4, up 7% from the year-ago quarter). Neurocrine has credited double-digit prescription volume growth in total prescriptions and new (first-time) prescriptions, partially offset by a lower net price that the company called new “formulary access investments” designed to support long-term growth.

Crenessity generated $301.2 million in net product sales last year for Neurocrine, including $135.3 million in the fourth quarter, reflecting 2,048 total new patient enrollment start forms, 431 of them in Q4 2025.

Neurocrine reasons that the three drugs will deliver sustained revenue growth for the combined company through the end of the decade.

Also for Neurocrine, a buyout of Soleno presents a “more sensible way into metabolic disease” than by developing its own pipeline candidates, which are in preclinical phases, and risking competitive and regulatory challenges, BMO Capital Markets analyst Evan Seigerman observed in a research note reported by Reuters.

Neurocrine has disclosed plans to begin Phase I studies this year for two preclinical obesity candidates: NBIP-‘2118, a CRF2 agonist; and ‘NBIP-‘1968, a combination of ‘2118 and the company’s own GIP (glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide)/ GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) preferring triple agonist, which Neurocrine calls “light” on glucagon activity.

News of a potential buyout of Soleno by Neurocrine was first reported Sunday by the Financial Times.

Soleno investors signaled approval of the buyout Monday by sending shares to $52.25, up 32% from Thursday’s close of $39.49 (Markets were closed Friday for Good Friday). However, Neurocrine’s investors weren’t as supportive of the deal as that company’s shares barely budged, closing at $132.48, up 0.67% from $131.60 on Thursday.

Second thoughts?

A potential reason: Neurocrine investors may have second thoughts about a deal that would add to its pipeline Vykat XR, whose prescribing label includes warnings and precautions about past reports of hyperglycemia and fluid retention/edema, as Sumant Kulkarni, a senior analyst covering biotechnology with Canaccord Genuity, commented in a research note.

“We believe NBIX would have to articulate its plans very well for investors to display enthusiasm from the get-go,” Kulkarni wrote.

Yet two things could work in Neurocrine’s favor, Kulkarni added: The company’s solid track record of commercialization as seen with Ingrezza and Crenessity, and the prospect of adding to the portfolio Vykat XR given its approval for a rare form of obesity.

San Diego-based Neurocrine reported approximately 2,000 employees as of December 31, 2025, with plans during the first quarter to complete the expansion of sales teams for Ingrezza and Crenessity “to maximize our commercial momentum.” Soleno is based in Redwood City, CA, and reported a workforce of 182 full-time employees as of the end of 2025.

At $53 per share cash, the purchase price represents a premium of about 34% above Soleno’s closing share price Thursday, and a premium of 51% to Soleno’s 30-day volume-weighted average price (VWAP).

The boards of both Neurocrine and Soleno have approved the transaction, which is expected to close within 90 days subject to satisfying customary closing conditions that include receipt of regulatory approvals.

Neurocrine will acquire Soleno by launching a tender offer for that company’s outstanding shares. Following a successful completion of the tender offer, a wholly owned subsidiary of Neurocrine will merge with Soleno, and the outstanding Soleno shares not tendered in the offer will be converted into the right to receive the same $53 per share in cash paid in the tender offer.

Consummation of the tender offer is subject to the tender of at least a majority of the outstanding shares of Soleno, the expiration or termination of the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, and other customary conditions.

Neurocine said it will fund its acquisition of Soleno using a “modest amount” of pre-payable debt plus cash on hand. Neurocrine reported $1.48 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities as of December 31, 2025—up 37.5% from $1.076 billion a year earlier.

The post Neurocrine Grows in Endocrinology, Rare Disease with $2.9B Soleno Buyout appeared first on GEN – Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.

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STAT+: At hospital finance conference, a call to end the friction that’s keeping costs high

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — At this week’s annual meeting of hospital finance leaders, the exhibit hall was packed with dozens of billing and collections companies. Armed with candy, tote bags, and pens, they smiled at passersby, eager to explain why their tactics would extract the most money from health insurers.

The sheer number of “revenue cycle” vendors who attended the Healthcare Financial Management Association’s annual conference in Maryland — outnumbering even the hospital attendees, according to a list shared by an organizer — was a visible reminder of the enormous industry built around just paying medical bills.

The U.S. health care industry spends roughly $200 billion annually on financial transactions: claims processing, payment, collections, and prior authorization. And yet the proliferation of billing vendors seemed to clash with the main theme of HFMA’s conference, affordability, spotlighting the need to simplify the billing process so that health care is less costly and more accessible for patients.

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Published

43 minutes ago

June 12, 2026

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Beyond sunshine: Iberia’s biotech moment has arrived with developing capital networks

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2 hours ago

June 12, 2026

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Strong science, lower costs and growing capital networks are putting Spain and Portugal on the biotech investment map, even as structural bottlenecks persist, according to two investors.

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Laser‑Driven Phase Contrast Enhances Cryo‑EM Resolution of Small Proteins

Published

7 hours ago

June 12, 2026

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You know when you are at the eye doctor getting an updated prescription, and suddenly the world snaps into sharper focus? Physicists at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, have now done something similar for electron microscopy. By introducing phase contrast into a cryo‑electron microscope, they have delivered dramatically sharper images of some of biology’s smallest and most elusive proteins.

The advance comes from a new laser phase plate (LPP), described in the paper “Laser phase plate improves structure determination of small proteins by cryo‑EM,” which was published recently in Science. Led by physicist Holger Mueller, PhD, of UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the team demonstrated that a laser‑driven phase plate can overcome one of cryo‑EM’s most persistent limitations: poor contrast for small proteins.

Cryo-EM images of two proteins, apoferritin and hemoglobin, taken without and with a laser phase plate. The images are analyzed in a computer to produce detailed 3D structures of the proteins. [Holger Müller, Jessie Zhang/UC Berkeley]

Cryo‑EM has transformed structural biology over the past decade, earning a Nobel Prize in 2017 for enabling high‑resolution structures without crystallization. But despite its impact, the technique still struggles with proteins below ~70 kilodaltons—a size range that includes about 90% of the human proteome. “Because of signal-to-noise limitations, the majority of human and animal proteins are too small to be analyzed by these methods [cryo-EM and cryoelectron tomography]. The increase in signal-to-noise ratio provided by this laser phase plate is expected to overcome these important limitations.”

The new LPP begins to address that problem. The LPP uses an intense, continuous‑wave laser to shift the phase of the electron beam itself. This produces true phase contrast without dimming or destabilizing the beam. Mueller described the laser focus as “75 kilowatts focused to a few microns… That’s more powerful than what you use for welding. It has more power than a military laser. It builds up the brightest continuous laser focus ever.”

Installed in a custom Thermo Fisher Titan Krios, the LPP immediately improved the clarity and resolvability of small proteins, including hemoglobin, which sits at the lower limit of what today’s cryo‑EM instruments can handle. As the authors wrote in the abstract: “Here, we show that the laser phase plate (LPP)… enhances the resolution in single-particle reconstruction of small proteins by improving specimen-motion correction, recovery of information from the early frames, as well as particle visualization, 3D classification, and alignment.”

phase plate cover Cryo-EM — A laser (purple) is powerfully amplified by highly polished mirrors and focused on the electron beam (blue) to shift its phase and increase the cryo-EM microscope’s contrast, allowing biologists to image smaller proteins and the crowded structures inside cells. [Sayo Studio]

These improvements were achieved using standard defocus ranges and reconstruction workflows. “For the most challenging cases—small particles, bad specimens—the laser produces a very considerable advantage,” Mueller said.

The impact extends beyond single‑particle analysis. Cryo‑electron tomography (cryo‑ET), which assembles multiple angular views of a molecule or protein into a three-dimensional image, stands to benefit even more. “With cryo-ET, we’re looking at small, very complicated cellular material that’s incredibly crowded inside the cell,” said Bridget Carragher, PhD, founding technical director of imaging at Biohub. “It’s like a forest of trees, and you’re trying to find one leaf on one tree in there. Cryo-ET needs a dramatic step forward in contrast, so we can start to see what’s going on inside the cell. That’s what the laser phase plate promises to give us.”

Biohub is developing a dual‑laser version of the system, designed to reduce component wear and minimize aberrations. Meanwhile, Mueller’s team is pushing toward imaging proteins as small as 17 kilodaltons, a threshold that would open access to vast regions of the human proteome previously invisible to cryo‑EM.

“This technology is a step function change for biology,” said Stephani Otte, PhD, Biohub’s vice president of imaging science. “What was once invisible will become visible—and that changes everything about how we understand disease.”

“The bottom line is, if you have a large protein and a really good sample—a fresh one or one frozen without bubbles, for example—you may not need the phase plate to get a single, high-quality image. But for a small protein and a bad sample, laser-on is best,” Mueller said. “This could fill an enormous gap in our knowledge of protein structures that can’t be crystallized or are too small for today’s cryo-EM. And it will be revolutionary for cryo-ET.”

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