Sumitomo Pharma is doing a little bit of spring cleaning to bring a handful of biopharma units under one consolidated company to be named Sumitomo Pharma America.
Sumitomo will merge seven units—Sunovion Pharmaceuticals, Sumitomo Pharma America Holdings, Sumitomo Pharma Oncology, Sumitovant Biopharma, Myovant Sciences, Urovant Sciences and Enzyvant Therapeutics—to become one remaining company: Sunovion Pharmaceuticals. But in order to “unify the corporate brand,” the surviving company will be renamed to Sumitomo Pharma America, Sumitomo Pharma said in a corporate release (PDF).
The shake-up comes in response to the loss of exclusivity for Sunovion’s Latuda, Sumitomo Pharma said. The company hopes the move will help achieve sustained growth in U.S. operations by creating “a more robust” subsidiary with a strong portfolio that can take advantage of scale, efficiencies, “cost synergies” and global governance.
Leading the combined U.S. operations out of Cambridge, Massachusetts, will be Myrtle Potter, who has led Sumitovant since December 2019. The unit formed after five “vants” were sold by Roivant to Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma, later becoming one singular unit called Sumitovant operated by Potter. Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma later changed its name to Sumitomo Pharma in April 2022.
Sumitovant just completed the acquisition of all shares of Myovant that were not already owned for $1.7 billion, according to a March 10 release.
Sumitomo Pharma is calculating the financial impact of the moves but did not share any costs associated with the consolidation.
After the consolidation, Sumitomo Pharma will still have a few loose units in the organization chart. The Japanese company has four holdings companies in the U.K. that have four subsidiaries underneath them.