AstraZeneca plans to purchase Waltham, Mass.-based CinCor Pharma in a deal worth up to $1.8 billion as it looks to expand its pipeline of heart and kidney drugs with CinCor’s hypertension candidate baxdrostat.

Baxdrostat, an aldosterone synthase inhibitor, is a potential next-generation therapy for lowering blood pressure in patients with treatment-resistant hypertension.

AstraZeneca seeks to combine baxdrostat with its blockbuster diabetes, heart failure and kidney disease drug Farxiga (dapagliflozin), which saw global sales of approximately $3 billion in 2021 and an estimated $3.2 billion in the first nine months of 2022.

During the same nine-month period, AstraZeneca’s heart, kidney and diabetes business — its second most-profitable unit behind cancer therapies — brought in global sales of approximately $6.9 billion out of total revenue of $33.1 billion.