Charles River Laboratories has snapped up British CRO KWS BioTest for £15 million ($20 million), enhancing its offerings in immuno-oncology and inflammatory and infectious diseases.
KWS specializes in offering in vitro and in vivo testing services in the larger area of immunology, including target identification and validation, lead optimization, in vivo disease models and clinical sample analysis.
“The addition of KWS strategically expands Charles River’s existing discovery capabilities in the field of immunology, which is critical given the importance of new therapies which harness the human immune system,” said Charles River chairman, president and CEO James Foster, in a statement.
Recent research progress in immuno-oncology, most notably checkpoint inhibitors and the recent CAR-T therapies, have clearly sparked growing interest from biopharma companies as developers and CROs as service supporters. The KWS acquisition follows two other CRO consolidations with a focus on immunology/immuno-oncology: Cancer Genetics’ $12 million deal for Australian CRO vivoPharm last August and Concept Life Sciences’ November purchase of Aquila BioMedical.
Charles River itself has also been building up its oncology offerings. It recently formed a collaboration with InSphero to build in vitro 3D tumor microtissues from patient-derived xenographs (PDXs) for more accurate evaluation of cancer treatments. It also added more molecular characteristics to its library of PDXs back in May.
The CRO giant also pledged an additional £3 million for KWS based on its future performance and said the transaction wasn’t expected to substantially affect its 2018 results.
By Angus Liu
Source: Fierce Biotech
UCB (Euronext: UCB) and Zogenix (NASDAQ: ZGNX) announced that the companies have entered into a definitive agreement under which UCB would acquire Zogenix, Inc., a global biopharmaceutical company commercializing and developing therapies for rare diseases.
argenx SE, a global immunology company committed to improving the lives of people suffering from severe autoimmune diseases, announced that Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) has approved VYVGART™ (efgartigimod alfa) intravenous infusion for the treatment of adult patients with generalized myasthenia gravis (gMG) who do not have sufficient response to steroids or non-steroidal immunosuppressive therapies (ISTs).
GSK has rejected three offers from Unilever to buy GSK’s consumer health unit, the company said Saturday. The latest offer from the fellow U.K. consumer goods giant, received Dec. 20 for a total value of 50 billion pounds ($68 billion), “fundamentally undervalued” the business and its prospects, GSK said.
