With Daiichi Sankyo’s priorities increasingly tied to its innovative medicines—and its oncology portfolio in particular—the Tokyo-based drugmaker is following in the footsteps of several of its peers with a deal to split from its consumer health business.
Daiichi has entered an agreement with Japanese beverage giant Suntory Holdings to transfer all shares in its subsidiary, Daiichi Sankyo Healthcare, which markets (PDF) a slate of popular over-the-counter treatments, including the decades-old combination cold remedy Lulu and the anti-inflammatory pain and fever reducer Loxonin.
The current deal framework places the transfer value at 246.5 billion Japanese yen (roughly $1.55 billion), Daiichi Sankyo said in an April 15 press release (PDF). As it stands, Daiichi plans to carry out the transfer in stages, starting with the handover of 30% of its consumer health subsidiary’s shares this June. The entire process is expected to wrap up by June 2029, according to the company.
Daiichi Sankyo currently holds 100% of the shares in the healthcare unit being sold to Suntory.
In its release, Daiichi framed the deal as a means to ensure growth for its over-the-counter drugs business, which has also branched out into areas like skincare, oral care and food products.
In turn, Daiichi said that moving forward, it would drill down on its innovative medicines business, and “particularly the oncology business.”
Daiichi Sankyo has asserted itself in recent years as a force to be reckoned with among antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) developers, thanks to the success of its two AstraZeneca-partnered products, Enhertu and Datroway. Enhertu has been cleared across breast, gastric and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), plus HER2-positive solid tumors, while Datroway—first approved early last year—is indicated for certain patients with breast cancer and NSCLC.
At the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference earlier this year, Daiichi CEO Hiroyuki Okuzawa set out the ambition for his company’s ADCs to cover 700,000 eligible patients by fiscal year 2030—an impressive leap from the 120,000 the company tallied for its 2025 fiscal year, which ended in March.
Apart from Daiichi, a growing number of drugmakers have elected to part ways with their over-the-counter businesses in recent years. Most recently, Sanofi scooped up 10 billion euros last spring by selling a controlling stake in its consumer health business Opella to U.S. private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice.
Prior to that, prominent consumer health spinouts have been charted by Johnson & Johnson with its Kenvue business and GSK via Haleon, among multiple other recent examples.