Pfizer Inc., maker of a top-selling Covid vaccine, will buy all the shares of Trillium Therapeutics Inc.it doesn’t own, gaining the immune cancer drugmaker for an equity value of $2.26 billion.
Pfizer will pay $18.50 a share for Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Trillium, the companies said Monday in a statement. The price represents a 118% premium to the stock’s 60-day weighted average price.
Pfizer invested $25 million in Trillium in September as part of its Breakthrough Growth Initiative, when Jeff Settleman, senior vice president of Pfizer’s oncology research and development group, was named to Trillium’s scientific advisory board.
Trillium’s two lead molecules, TTI-622 and TTI-621, block signaling proteins involved in blood cancers, and are both in human trials across several types of disease.
Shares of Trillium nearly tripled in trading before U.S. markets opened, while Pfizer rose 3.8%.