Over the past sev­er­al years, Mass­a­chu­setts-based con­trac­tor Charles Riv­er Lab­o­ra­to­ries has been busy on the M&A front, with the lat­est, $50 mil­lion buy­out com­ing Mon­day for a provider of high-through­put screen­ing so­lu­tions for dis­cov­ery re­search.

Chica­go-based SAM­DI Tech will now be fold­ed in­to Charles Riv­er’s dis­cov­ery and safe­ty as­sess­ment di­vi­sion, Charles Riv­er an­nounced.

The $50 mil­lion in cash is for the 80% of SAM­DI that Charles Riv­er didn’t pre­vi­ous­ly own. Oth­er fi­nan­cial de­tails on the deal were not dis­closed.

Jack­ie Macritchie, VP and re­gion­al gen­er­al man­ag­er for dis­cov­ery at Charles Riv­er, told End­points News in an email that it’s in the process of in­te­grat­ing SAM­DI Tech and its 10 em­ploy­ees in­to the com­pa­ny.

Ac­cord­ing to Macritchie, Charles Riv­er and SAM­DI Tech orig­i­nal­ly part­nered with each oth­er in 2018, with that re­la­tion­ship strength­ened last year. The deal will ap­ply to aug­ment­ing dis­cov­ery ef­forts for clients, Macritchie added.

“SAM­DI Tech is a spe­cial­ized tech­nol­o­gy provider, whose unique of­fer­ing en­ables us to pro­vide la­bel-free screen­ing in a high through­put set­ting as part of the ear­ly dis­cov­ery process. SAM­DI (Self-As­sem­bled Mono­lay­er Des­orp­tion Ion­iza­tion) tech­nol­o­gy acts as a so­lu­tion to the chal­lenges and pit­falls of la­bel-de­pen­dent bio­chem­i­cal as­says and im­proves qual­i­ty, speed and en­hances val­ue for clients through bring­ing bet­ter treat­ments faster,” Macritchie said in an email to End­points.

Charles Riv­er has been on an ac­qui­si­tion spree over the past few years, with pur­chas­es in 2019 in­clud­ing the $380 mil­lion ac­qui­si­tion of HemaCare, a provider of ma­te­ri­als and ser­vices for com­pa­nies de­vel­op­ing cell ther­a­pies.

In 2021, it al­so put down $292.5 mil­lion for the CD­MO Vi­gene Bio­sciences, snap­ping up man­u­fac­tur­ing space in Mary­land.

Charles Riv­er cut the rib­bon on man­u­fac­tur­ing space across the At­lantic last year, pri­mar­i­ly at a 16,000-square-foot for­mer As­traZeneca lo­ca­tion in Cheshire, UK, as a re­sult of ac­quir­ing Cog­nate BioSer­vices and Co­bra Bi­o­log­ics in 2021 for $875 mil­lion.

Belgian biotech Confo Therapeutics has landed $183 million, plus potential royalties, in a drug-discovery deal with Daiichi Sankyo.

Early Thursday, Confo Therapeutics put out word of the deal that will be focused on small molecule antagonists to go after an undisclosed target that the company says is associated with CNS diseases.

Confo CEO Cedric Ververken told Endpoints News that Daiichi originally reached out to learn about the biotech’s technology. He added that Confo, founded in 2015, will use its platform to drug a GPCR target that Daiichi has struggled with internally.

Otonomy may be shutting down, but the lessons learned there will live on at another biotech working on new treatments for hearing loss.

San Francisco-based Spiral Therapeutics has bought certain assets related to three of Otonomy’s programs, ranging from data, patent rights, and know-how to inventory. That includes data around Otonomy’s twice-failed lead program, OTO-104 (Otividex), a sustained-exposure formulation of dexamethasone.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

The government of the United Kingdom is giving out grants to several manufacturers that have a presence in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The government announced that four companies, including Ipsen, contract manufacturer Pharmaron, DNA manufacturer Touchlight and diagnostic test producer Randox, will receive a total of £277 million ($341.1 million). According to a release from the UK government, this represents the first portion of grants from the Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund.