My­lan is in­creas­ing its pres­ence in Eu­rope with a high-dol­lar ac­qui­si­tion of a blood clot port­fo­lio.

The gener­ic drug­mak­er is pay­ing more than three-quar­ters of a bil­lion dol­lars to gob­ble up As­pen Phar­ma­care’s throm­bo­sis busi­ness on the con­ti­nent. The ex­act sum of €641.9 mil­lion, or about $757 mil­lion, will be divvied up in­to an up­front pay­ment of about 41% of the to­tal, with the re­main­ing be­ing de­ferred to next June.

Ra­jiv Ma­lik

Tues­day’s deal, which is ex­pect­ed to close at the end of 2020, “will not on­ly make My­lan the sec­ond largest sup­pli­er of these prod­ucts to pa­tients in Eu­rope, ac­cord­ing to IQVIA, but al­so bol­ster our ex­ist­ing com­mer­cial in­fra­struc­ture to fur­ther ex­pand ac­cess to com­plex in­jecta­bles,” My­lan pres­i­dent Ra­jiv Ma­lik said in a state­ment.

As­pen, a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny based in South Africa, will re­tain the li­cens­ing rights to its throm­bo­sis drugs in emerg­ing mar­kets. The drug­mak­er saw shares go up 6% in off-hour trad­ing, while My­lan stock perked up a lit­tle over 2%.

With the ac­qui­si­tion, My­lan gains ac­cess to an­ti­co­ag­u­lants sold un­der the brand names Ar­ix­tra, Frax­i­parine, Mono-Em­bolex and Or­garan, which net­ted a com­bined sales to­tal of about $272 mil­lion in the 12-month pe­ri­od end­ing June 2020. As­pen will be man­u­fac­tur­ing and sup­ply­ing the prod­ucts, where­as My­lan will ac­quire com­mer­cial­iza­tion rights and re­lat­ed in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty of the busi­ness.

That in­cludes prod­uct reg­is­tra­tions and mar­ket­ing au­tho­riza­tions, in ad­di­tion to buy­ing out the Eu­ro­pean port­fo­lio.

There isn’t ex­pect­ed to be any over­lap with this trans­ac­tion and the merg­er of My­lan and Pfiz­er-spin­out Up­john, ini­ti­at­ed in Ju­ly 2019. That deal is al­so ex­pect­ed to close be­fore 2020 is out, My­lan said Tues­day, and will in­volve re­nam­ing the com­bined com­pa­ny to Vi­a­tris.

The merg­er orig­i­nal­ly came to­geth­er af­ter the US gener­ics mar­ket saw loss­es in re­cent years due to com­pe­ti­tion from man­u­fac­tur­ers in low­er- and mid­dle-in­come coun­tries like In­dia. Larg­er gener­ic drug­mak­ers had been con­sol­i­dat­ing, hop­ing the ex­tra cash could al­low fur­ther in­vest­ment and stave off the oth­er copy­cats. In 2018, In­dia’s Au­robindo Phar­ma bought parts of No­var­tis’ gener­ics unit for $1 bil­lion, and in 2015, Te­va swal­lowed Al­ler­gan’s gener­ic busi­ness for $40.5 bil­lion.

At the time, some an­a­lysts such as Cowen’s Ken Cac­cia­tore did not be­lieve the My­lan-Up­john deal would solve any­thing. Though he had “long felt that stand­alone My­lan was ab­solute­ly bro­ken,” the es­ti­mat­ed rev­enue from Vi­a­tris came in un­der his own pro­jec­tions.

“This on­ly adds con­vic­tion to our orig­i­nal the­sis that this merg­er will solve noth­ing, and that the pres­sure and neg­a­tive view of the com­bi­na­tion will like­ly on­ly in­crease in­to the even­tu­al close,” he wrote.

Up­john had been based in Shang­hai to pro­duce drugs for emerg­ing mar­kets, and once in­clud­ed knock­offs of block­buster prod­ucts such as Lip­i­tor, Vi­a­gra and Lyri­ca.

Billionaire Peter Thiel has made significant and sometimes controversial pushes into life sciences over the past few years, and one of his startups out of Berlin has made a new acquisition less than two months after achieving unicorn status.

ATAI Life Sciences purchased a majority stake Tuesday in Recognify Life Sciences, a company focused on developing treatments for cognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia. The financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but the acquisition follows up a $125 million Series C in November co-led by Thiel, leading to a post-money valuation of about $1 billion for ATAI.

Between Covid-19 vaccines and gene therapies, the contract manufacturing market for viral vector tech has grown at a rapid clip. Thermo Fisher Scientific, already one of the biggest CDMOs on the block, has now made a move to buoy its EU footprint in that field.

Thermo Fisher will pay $878 million to acquire Henogen SA, Novasep’s viral vector manufacturing business, which comprises two Belgian locations in Seneffe and Gosselies that offer over 75,000 square feet of clinical and commercial manufacturing capacity, the Massachusetts company said Friday.

Five Prime Therapeutics has finalized a plan to take their comeback gastric cancer drug into late-stage studies.

The South San Francisco-based biotech released full Phase II data for bemarituzumab on Friday, which Five Prime said in November met all of its pre-specified efficacy endpoints in a topline readout. Now, the company is announcing it plans to launch a Phase III trial for the program in 2021. Following November’s readout, the future of bemarituzumab had not yet been finalized.