Vertex buys Crinetics for $10bn in endocrinology drive

Vertex Pharma has made the largest acquisition in its history, agreeing to buy Crinetics Pharma for around $10 billion in a deal that will give it an approved treatment for acromegaly.

The $85-per-share transaction, approved by both companies' boards and set to close in the third quarter, also adds a pipeline of drug candidates for hormonal rare diseases that Vertex said offers around $5 billion in peak sales potential. The offer price is a 100% premium to Crinetics' closing share price yesterday, and the stock has doubled in after-hours trading.

For Vertex, the deal represents its biggest move yet as it tries to diversify its business beyond its core cystic fibrosis therapies, and is twice the size of its takeover of Alpine Immune Sciences for around $4.9 billion in 2024, which brought povetacicept, a late-stage treatment for kidney disease IgA nephropathy (IgAN).

It comes just a few months after Crinetics won US and European approval for Palsonify (paltusotine) for first-line treatment of adults with acromegaly, a rare disease caused by excess growth hormone production as a result of a tumour in the pituitary gland.

The drug, which targets somatostatin receptor type 2 and insulin-like growth factor-1, is the first once-daily oral pill for the condition, which affects around 200,000 people in the US. Analysts have suggested it could become a $1 billion-a-year brand by 2034 as it displaces older, injectable acromegaly therapies from the market.

Behind that lies atumelnant, a once-daily oral adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) receptor antagonist currently in phase 3 development for congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), a rare disease affecting around 17,000 people in the US that causes the body to produce too much male hormone (androgen) and not enough cortisol, with serious health consequences.

Atumelnant would be a rival to Neurocrine Bioscience's CRF1 antagonist Crenessity (crinecerfont), approved by the FDA in 2024, which made more than $300 million in sales in its first year on the market. It generated phase 2 results that Crinetics has interpreted as improving on Crenessity's clinical profile.

Crinetics is also working on a TSH antagonist for Graves' hyperthyroidism and Graves' orbitopathy (thyroid eye disease), an SST3 agonist for autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD), and a PTH antagonist for hyperparathyroidism, as well as a non-peptide drug conjugate therapy for neuroendocrine tumours (NETs).

Vertex recorded revenues of $12 billion in 2025, mainly from its CF products, and has previously said it expects to see growth to around $13 billion this year, with a $500 million-plus contribution from non-CF products, which include sickle cell disease (SCD) and transfusion-dependent beta thalassaemia (TDT) gene therapy Casgevy (exagamglogene autotemcel).