JSR Life Sciences’ parent corp. will pay NT$12 billion ($400 million) for Crown Bioscience International, boosting its global footprint and CRO offerings.
Crown Bioscience has offices across the U.S., Europe, China and Taiwan and works with a portfolio of translational platforms for oncology and CVMD. It touts itself as showing insight into a drug’s efficacy, pharmacological profile and patient response profile, which it says helps toward “reducing failure in the clinic, and supporting the selection of the right patients for the right therapy.”
The deal marks JSR’s largest life sciences-focused investment to date, boosting its portfolio with a CRO and its worldwide locations.
“We are positioning to be the clear choice for innovation-driven strategic partnerships,” said Eric Johnson, president of JSR’s life sciences division. “CrownBio, and its science-rich approach, is an ideal fit to support that goal. We’re bringing together innovative competencies that will lead to better solutions for pharma and improve their ability to take therapeutics to the market.”
JSR Life Sciences’ division, with bases in Tokyo, Sunnyvale, Leuven and Beijing, predominately works on materials for biopharma manufacturing processes, as well as for life science research applications, in vitro diagnostics and medical devices.
JSR says it forecast, based “on consultation” with CrownBio’s management team, sees sales and EBITDA margins of “$90 million and $20 million, respectively in 2018.”
This comes amid an M&A spurt from the company, which in the last few years has bought out CDMO KBI Biopharma and MBL Corporation, as well as Selexis earlier this year.
“JSR envisions that CrownBio’s development capabilities will enhance the contribution of JKiC, the company’s Japan-based industry-academia-medicine collaboration hub, by providing the tools and expertise to translate leading-edge research into tomorrow’s medicines,” the company said in a statement.
By Ben Adams
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.
