Fol­low­ing a sum­mer filled with merg­ers and ac­qui­si­tions, Charles Riv­er Lab­o­ra­to­ries has di­vest­ed its re­search op­er­a­tions in Japan and a CD­MO site in Swe­den, en­gi­neer­ing two sep­a­rate deals ex­pect­ed to cut down $20 mil­lion in rev­enue.

Tues­day, Charles Riv­er sold its gene ther­a­py CD­MO site to a pri­vate in­vestor group for about $52 mil­lion in cash, with the po­ten­tial for con­tin­gent pay­ments up to $25 mil­lion. The site was in the com­pa­ny’s pos­ses­sion for on­ly a few months, as it was ac­quired from Cog­nate BioSer­vices on March 29.

The site pri­mar­i­ly pro­duces plas­mid DNA for gene ther­a­pies. It has about 130 em­ploy­ees and gen­er­at­ed $10 mil­lion in rev­enue in 2020, and the sale re­duces earn­ings per share by about 10 cents in Q4 of this year. Charles Riv­er says it still will pro­duce pDNA in oth­er sites in the UK and US.

The two deals — done sep­a­rate­ly — gen­er­at­ed $98 mil­lion for Charles Riv­er. The sale of the RMS Japan op­er­a­tions to the Jack­son Lab­o­ra­to­ry will pro­vide the buy­er with 260 em­ploy­ees and a busi­ness that gen­er­at­ed $46 mil­lion in rev­enue in 2020. Charles Riv­er and the Jack­son Lab­o­ra­to­ry have had a dis­tri­b­u­tion agree­ment for more than 20 years, and Charles Riv­er will still have the Japan lo­ca­tion make and dis­trib­ute the com­pa­ny’s re­search mod­els in Japan. The site was sold for $63 mil­lion.

James Fos­ter

In mid-May, Charles Riv­er paid $292.5 mil­lion for Vi­gene Bio­sciences and its 52,000 square feet of man­u­fac­tur­ing space in Rockville, MD. In Feb­ru­ary, the com­pa­ny bought Cog­nate and pledged to dou­ble ca­pac­i­ty in Mem­phis and Eu­rope. It teamed up with Va­lence Dis­cov­ery in April, and ex­pand­ed its man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions in Ire­land by ex­tend­ing its test­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties in a deal worth near­ly $10 mil­lion that will add an­oth­er 90 roles to the team in the next three years. The deal will al­so help pro­vide test­ing and de­ploy­ment of As­traZeneca’s Covid-19 jab Vaxzevria and flu vac­cine Fluenz.

About 6% of Charles Riv­er’s Q2 growth was thanks to ac­qui­si­tions, ac­cord­ing to an earn­ings re­port. Year-over-year rev­enue was up 34% this year af­ter Q2, from $682.6 mil­lion in 2020 to $914.6 mil­lion. CEO James Fos­ter said in a press re­lease that the strength of the non-clin­i­cal con­tract re­search and man­u­fac­tur­ing port­fo­lios helped po­si­tion the com­pa­ny to re­spond well to the de­mands that came along with Covid-19.

In a May in­ter­view with End­points News, Bir­git Gir­shick — a 32-year Charles Riv­er vet­er­an and EVP of dis­cov­ery and safe­ty as­sess­ment — said that or­gan­ic in­vest­ment through M&As has helped the com­pa­ny nav­i­gate an area un­der con­stant change.

“Our guid­ing prin­ci­ple for ac­qui­si­tions is to ac­quire com­pa­nies with the best sci­ence and the best peo­ple,” she said. “This is how we en­hance the breadth and qual­i­ty of our ser­vices as we grow.”

The EMA is putting EU member states on alert over the shortage of two drugs that counter heart attacks due to an uptick in demand.

On Friday, the EMA sent out a warning that two Boehringer Ingelheim drugs are experiencing a shortage: Actilyse and Metalyse. The drugs are used as emergency treatments for adults experiencing acute myocardial infarction, or a heart attack, by dissolving blood clots that have formed in the blood vessels.

Back in April, Amgen said it was encouraged by the solicitor general’s anticipated review of its Supreme Court petition to rehear a Repatha patent case. They’re likely much less optimistic about the outcome now.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a recent 27-page brief that Amgen’s arguments “lack merit and further review is not warranted.”

The case traces back to a suit filed in 2014 against Sanofi and Regeneron’s Praluent, which ended up beating Amgen’s PCSK9 blockbuster Repatha to market by a month just a year later.

Allogene Therapeutics said in an SEC filing today that French partner Servier has cut off its involvement in a partnership developing therapies directed against CD19, including the most advanced candidates in Allogene’s pipeline.

Shares of Allogene $ALLO, an outfit run by Kite vets Arie Belldegrun and research chief David Chang, fell by almost 10% on Wednesday, even as the San Francisco-based company said that Servier’s discontinuation “does not otherwise affect our current exclusive license for the development and commercialization of CD19 Products in the United States.”

Fujifilm’s CDMO arm, Fujifilm Diosynth, has been on a roll this month as the company has recently broken ground on a major project in Europe and it appears to be keeping up the momentum.

Fujifilm Diosynth announced that it has kicked off an expansion project for its microbial manufacturing facility at its campus in the town of Billingham, UK, in the northeast of England.

The 20,000 square-foot, £400 million ($435 million) expansion will add clean rooms, purification suites and a packing area along with more space for the manufacturing itself.