AbbVie announced late Wednesday that it has agreed to buy Pharmacyclics, a maker of a cancer drug that some analysts predict will eventually become one of the best-selling treatments for that disease, for about $21 billion.
The deal is the latest in the health care industry, which has been rife with transactions as drug makers seek to refill their product pipelines with new treatments.
It would also culminate a remarkable turnaround for Pharmacyclics and its chief executive, Robert W. Duggan.
Under the terms of the deal, AbbVie will pay $261.25 per share in cash and stock. That represents a 13 percent premium to Wednesday’s closing price.
Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., Pharmacyclics focuses on anticancer drugs. Its product is Imbruvica, a pill used to treat certain blood cancers. A one-month treatment can cost around $9,000 or more.
Pharmacyclics’ revenue was $730 million in 2014, compared with $260 million the previous year.
The acquisition cements a huge financial windfall for Mr. Duggan, the Pharmacyclics chief, who had no experience in pharmaceuticals when he took over the company in 2008, a year in which the stock dipped below $1 a share. It closed on Wednesday at $230.48; Mr. Duggan’s stake is worth about $3.2 billion.
Mr. Duggan had made fortunes investing in and helping run companies as varied as a maker of children’s embroidery sets, a cookie bakery and Computer Motion, a pioneer in robotic surgery, which became part of Intuitive Surgical.
He became an investor in Pharmacyclics in 2004 because he had a son with a brain tumor. The company was developing a drug for brain cancer that eventually failed to win approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Most of the company’s board resigned to allow Mr. Duggan and a slate of directors he proposed to take over.
Mr. Duggan thought about trying to revive the brain cancer drug, but the company instead concentrated on starting clinical trials for a compound it had acquired a few years earlier for only $6.6 million.
That compound became Imbruvica, known generically as ibrutinib, which was approved late in 2013. It is used to treat chronic lymphocytic leukemia and some other rarer blood cancers.
The deal is the first by AbbVie since its aborted attempt last year to buy Shire, an Ireland-based drug maker. That transaction — a so-called inversion, in which AbbVie would have moved its corporate residence abroad — was driven in large part by a desire to lower its taxes.
Those deals largely stopped after the Treasury Department changed tax rules. Nonetheless, the pace of health care deals has continued to be brisk.
Morgan Stanley and the law firm Wachtell, Liton, Rosen & Katz advised AbbVie. Centerview Partners, JPMorgan Chase and the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati advised Pharmacyclics.
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