There’s an­oth­er pri­vate eq­ui­ty deal to re­port on from the CRO front.

Al­bany, NY-based AM­RI $AM­RI an­nounced Tues­day morn­ing that it is be­ing bought out for $922 mil­lion by The Car­lyle Group and GT­CR.

The buy­out comes at $21.75 per share, which is a weight­ed av­er­age of 60 days trad­ing ahead of the first re­ports about the brew­ing deal that first emerged on April 5th.

There have been a string of CRO buy­outs and merg­ers over the past few years, with many of these deals aimed at con­sol­i­dat­ing a glob­al­ly frac­tured in­dus­try as drug de­vel­op­ers large and small look to out­side con­trac­tors to do much of the heavy lift­ing.

Just weeks ago  INC and in­Ven­tiv an­nounced a ma­jor merg­er.

Dean Mi­has

“We strong­ly be­lieve in AM­RI’s strate­gic di­rec­tion and have been very im­pressed with man­age­ment’s abil­i­ty to trans­form the busi­ness in­to a trust­ed part­ner for the bio­phar­ma in­dus­try,” said Dean Mi­has, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and head of the health­care group for GT­CR, in a pre­pared state­ment.  “We be­lieve AM­RI is unique­ly po­si­tioned to cap­i­tal­ize on an in­creased trend for out­sourc­ing of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts and ser­vices and look for­ward to part­ner­ing with the AM­RI team to achieve its strate­gic ob­jec­tives and dri­ve val­ue for all of AM­RI’s stake­hold­ers.”

→ A herd of up­start biotechs will look to Wall Street for some ma­jor wind­falls this week as a burst of new of­fer­ings con­tin­ues to feed cash in­to the R&D sys­tem. To­day we learned that Bridge­Bio will look to raise in the neigh­bor­hood of $225 mil­lion by of­fer­ing 15 mil­lion shares for $14 to $16 each. And they have a string of joint bookrun­ners: J.P. Mor­gan, Gold­man Sachs, Jef­feries, SVB Leerink, KKR, Piper Jaf­fray, Mizuho Se­cu­ri­ties, BMO Cap­i­tal Mar­kets and Ray­mond James. If suc­cess­ful, Bridge­Bio will emerge with a mar­ket cap of around $1.7 bil­lion. There are 5 biotechs look­ing to IPO this week, in­clud­ing Akero and Pre­vail.

While gene ther­a­py com­pa­nies re­joice as the sec­tor gains trac­tion with ap­provals and a flur­ry of M&A ac­tiv­i­ty, one play­er is feel­ing the heat.

Back in 2015, Voy­ager Ther­a­peu­tics joined forces with Sanofi Gen­zyme in a deal worth up to $845 mil­lion ($100 mil­lion up­front + a po­ten­tial $745 mil­lion in mile­stones) to co-de­vel­op gene ther­a­pies for se­vere cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem dis­or­ders. But two years lat­er, the French drug­mak­er re­treat­ed, elect­ing to not pick up the op­tion to work on Voy­ager’s Parkin­son’s dis­ease pro­gram. (Last year, the FDA dis­ap­point­ed Voy­ager, telling the com­pa­ny that it was not open to an ac­cel­er­at­ed fil­ing on the Parkin­son’s drug on the ba­sis of Phase II da­ta — in­stead of re­quir­ing an ad­di­tion­al piv­otal study.)

Sobered by mount­ing costs, Dy­navax $DVAX last month made the de­ci­sion to fo­cus all its re­sources on its 2017-ap­proved he­pati­tis B vac­cine Hep­lisav-B, which ri­vals and su­per­sedes the ef­fi­ca­cy and con­ve­nience pro­file of GSK’s $GSK es­tab­lished En­ger­ix-B. The Cal­i­for­nia-based com­pa­ny will be on the look­out for an­oth­er com­peti­tor — VBI Vac­cines, which on Mon­day un­veiled late-stage da­ta on its hep B vac­cine: Sci-B-Vac.

In a boost to Philadel­phia’s thriv­ing life sci­ences scene, a for­mer Glax­o­SmithK­line cam­pus and a near­by site has been turned in­to what its de­vel­op­er calls “the largest cowork­ing ecosys­tem” for health­care com­pa­nies in the coun­try.

The Dis­cov­ery Labs, a com­pa­ny spawned by MLP Ven­tures, has se­lect­ed two lo­ca­tions in the King of Prus­sia area as the $500 mil­lion test case for its strat­e­gy of ac­quir­ing and con­vert­ing old phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal R&D fa­cil­i­ties world­wide. The sites add up to 1.64 mil­lion square feet.