Friday, March 8, 2019 Daily Archives

Life sciences ‘continues to rip’ for Germany’s Merck

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With a 14.8% year-on-year growth in its Process Solutions business, Merck KGaA has reported another strong year for its life sciences division. For the full year 2018, Germany’s Merck KGaA reported net sales of €14.8 billion ($16.6 billion) across all its divisions, a growth of 2.2% year-on-year. Its life sciences business pulled in €6.2 billion ($7 billion), up 5.2% on 2017 with a large contribution from its Process Solution business – which includes its MilliporeSigma unit – of €2.5 billion,…

March 8, 2019

Precision Bio $100m IPO to support allo CAR-T build-out

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Precision Bio hopes the initial public offering (IPO) will advance its off-the-shelf CAR-T candidates, based on its ARCUS genome editing platform. North Carolina-based Precision Bio has applied for a listing on the Nasdaq exchange. According to its Form S-1 filed with the SEC, the firm will use the anticipated $100 million (€88 million) raised in the IPO to advance and expand its clinical and preclinical development programs. This includes plans to complete a Phase I/IIa clinical trial for its CD19…

March 8, 2019

BioVectra: $135m boost for microbial CDMO’s Canadian plants

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The Mallinckrodt subsidiary will benefit from a Canadian government grant to help expand microbial fermentation sites in Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. In 2014, Mallinkrodt Pharmaceuticals acquired Canadian contract manufacturing organization (CMO) BioVectra as part of its $5.6 billion acquisition of Questcor Pharmaceuticals. The CMO has 64,000 L of fermentation bioreactor capacity across its four manufacturing plants in Atlantic Canada – three in Prince Edward Island and one in Nova Scotia. Now the sites are set to expand through…

March 8, 2019

In brief: Ambrx and BeiGene ink $450m biologics development deal

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The collaboration will use Ambrx’s clinically validated drug discovery technology with BeiGene’s resources to help develop and commercialize next-generation biologics. As part of the deal, Chinese firm BeiGene has paid $10 million (€9 million) upfront to access Ambrx’ Expanded Genetic Code platforms to discover novel biologic drug candidates. However, Ambrx could a further $446 million on potential development, regulatory, and sales-based milestone payments. The technology is designed to allow the incorporation of non-natural amino acids into proteins in both E.…

March 8, 2019