Laval-based Bellus doesn’t have a product on the market but it has a drug for chronic coughs—a common affliction with few treatments—in late clinical trials. The purchase price of US$14.75 a share is more than double the level Bellus’s stock traded at before the deal was announced. (The Logic)

Talking point: Bellus’s drug camlipixant selectively suppresses an overactive coughing reflex in a patient’s airway. The company cites an estimate that 28 million people have chronic coughs without underlying explanations, which can lead to depression, social withdrawal, pain and even fractures—so the potential market is big. GSK, anticipating the expiration of a patent on a key product and plateauing revenue from its Shingrix shingles vaccine, gets the fruits of a decade of Bellus’s work on camlipixant. That apparent success followed more than a decade of failures with drugs for kidney disease and Alzheimer’s, bankrolled by investors and the family fortune of the Bellini family, whose patriarch Francesco Bellini co-developed a cornerstone HIV treatment.