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.”

Steve Holtzman was awoken by a 1 a.m. call from a doctor at Duke University asking if he could put some pigs on a plane and fly them from Ohio to North Carolina that day. A motorcyclist had gotten into a horrific crash, the doctor explained. He believed the pigs’ livers, sutured onto the patient’s skin like an external filter, might be able to tide the young man over until a donor liver became available.

David Livingston, the Dana-Farber/Harvard Med scientist who helped shine a light on some of the key molecular drivers of breast and ovarian cancer, died unexpectedly last Sunday.

One of the senior leaders at Dana-Farber during his nearly half century of work there, Livingston was credited with shedding light on the genes that regulate cell growth, with insights into inherited BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations that helped lay the scientific foundation for targeted therapies and earlier detection that have transformed the field.

Just as Avoro Capital’s campaign to derail Merck’s proposed $11.5 billion buyout of Acceleron gains steam, Bristol Myers Squibb is leaning in with some hefty counterweight.

The pharma giant is planning to tender its Acceleron shares, Bloomberg reported, which add up to a sizable 11.5% stake. Based on the offer price, the sale would net Bristol Myers around $1.3 billion.

To complete its deal, Merck needs a majority of shareholders to agree to sell their shares.