Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has moved to acquire cardiovascular drug specialists Omthera Pharmaceuticals, in a deal valued at £294 million.

Omthera provides oil based drugs produced from fish and the move to acquire the drug heart specialist comes after the successful purchase of AlphaCore Pharma, another small firm working in the cardiovascular field.

The move by AstraZeneca places the pharmaceutical firm in direct competition with GlaxoSmithKline which already has fish oil based heart drugs in the market.

The recent move to acquire cardiovascular firms comes as AstraZeneca begins to see pharmaceutical patents expire on former products, resulting in an increasing fall in profits.

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