Sterile drug manufacturing is a growth area, and a London-based investment fund has bitten off a piece of it with the acquisition of a U.S. CDMO that specializes in the field.
Management and private equity firm Permira is buying out Lyophilization Services of New England (LSNE) for an undisclosed sum. LSNE has three manufacturing facilities located in New Hampshire that provide lyophilization services to pharma, biotech and medical device clients. It specializes in small to medium-size batches.
Matt Halvorsen, who founded the company in 1997, will retain a significant ownership position and continue to be its CEO, Permira said. Claes Glassell, the former CEO of CMC Biologics, will become chairman of the board, provide management support and help with the company’s growth strategy.
There has been a significant amount of growth in contract sterile manufacturing in recent years as a growing proportion of new drugs are sterile injectables. In 2015, Pfizer snapped up sterile injectable and biosimilar specialist Hospira for $15 billion.
And last year, Germany’s Fresenius Kabi announced it would invest $250 million in its manufacturing site in Melrose Park, Illinois into a showcase for its sterile injectable capabilities. That came after Fresenius agreed to buy a nearly new 115,000-square-foot plant and small portfolio of products from Becton Dickinson, which built the plant in Wilson, North Carolina as a way to boost its syringe manufacturing sales.
Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group last year struck a deal to buy an 86% stake in India’s Gland Pharma for $1.35 billion. Approval of that deal by Indian regulators was recently delayed. Hyderabad-based Gland has four manufacturing sites in India that handle a wide variety of container-types and fillings.
By Eric Palmer
Source: Fierce Pharma
The companies will explore opportunities to apply Flagship’s innovative bioplatforms – an ecosystem that currently comprises 41 companies – to scientific challenges in disease areas within cardiometabolic and rare diseases and initiate research programmes based on these.
BD is expanding its long-running partnership with the blood collection company Babson Diagnostics. The two companies have been working together since 2019 on a device that can gather small volumes of blood from the capillaries in the fingertip without requiring any specialized training, and beginning with a focus on supporting primary care in retail settings.
Wednesday, Australian biotech CSL said (PDF) the regulatory review of its $11.7 billion acquisition of Switzerland’s Vifor Pharma will take “a few more months,” suggesting it won’t be able to close the transaction by June 2022 as previously expected.
