Pharma BD Deal Intelligence
Roche shut down Medingo's Israeli R&D facility just two years after the $160M 2010 acquisition, shelving the acquired Solo MicroPump insulin patch pump for six years past its promised 2012 launch. It finally reached Europe in 2018 and didn't win US FDA clearance until 2023—thirteen years after the deal, making this a bust.
"Based on their history Diabetic Investor cannot imagine anyone reasonably believing that Roche will be successful here" — skeptical of the deal given Roche's…
Roche cited an 11%+ growth rate in the global insulin delivery market and noted that 'patients new to pumps in the U.S. increasingly favor patch-pump systems'…
"With this acquisition we will broaden our portfolio of innovative insulin delivery technologies and strengthen our position as a leading player in the…
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Roche acquired Israeli drug-delivery firm Medingo for $160M, gaining Solo wearable insulin patch pump technology.
Assessment window: 5yr post-close.
$1.7B Global insulin delivery systems market 2009 (CHF 1.6B ~ USD 1.7B)
Diabetes mellitus is a chronic metabolic disease in which the body fails to produce or respond to insulin, causing dangerous fluctuations in blood glucose. Insulin-dependent patients (all type 1 and a subset of advanced type 2) require multiple daily injections or continuous pump infusion to survive. Tubed pumps offer better glycemic control than injections but tubing fragility and visibility have limited adoption.
The 2010 insulin pump market was anchored by Medtronic's MiniMed Paradigm (the dominant tubed system), Insulet's Omnipod (the only commercially established tubeless patch pump in the US), Animas (J&J), and Roche's own Accu-Chek Combo and Spirit lines. Roche held strong share in blood glucose meters but trailed Medtronic and Insulet in pumps. Medingo's Solo MicroPump was a semi-disposable, tubeless, two-piece patch pump with a discrete remote control and the ability to disconnect/reconnect without reapplying — a differentiation against Insulet's fully disposable single-piece Omnipod and against Medtronic's tubed architecture. The deal gave Roche an in-house patch-pump platform to defend against Insulet and the entrant tubeless category, which Roche projected would grow over-proportionally as US pump-naive patients shifted to patches. Strategically, the acquisition was modest in scale ($160M upfront with up to 25% milestone earnout) but targeted: it filled a category Roche could not credibly enter organically and complemented Accu-Chek meter pull-through. The Solo system did not reach the US during Roche's ownership and was eventually launched in Europe in 2018 as Accu-Chek Solo. Source: https://www.pharmaceuticalonline.com/doc/roche-acquires-medingo-ltd-and-expands-its-0001
| Deal | Year | Value | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roche Holding AG / Medingo Ltd. (this deal) | 2010 | $160M | 25 |
| Roche Holding AG / Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. | 2002 | $1.4B | 100 |
| Roche Holding AG / Ventana Medical Systems Inc. | 2008 | $3.4B | 88 |
| Roche Holding AG / Corange Ltd. (Boehringer Mannheim Group) | 1997 | $11.0B | 88 |
| Roche Holding AG / Ventana Medical Systems Inc. | 2007 | $3.4B | 88 |
| Roche Holding AG / Foundation Medicine, Inc. | 2015 | $1.1B | 87 |
| Roche Holding AG / Foundation Medicine, Inc. | 2018 | $5.3B | 85 |
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More: 2010 deals · Roche Holding AG deals · Metabolic deals