Charles River secures $50M acquisition of drug discovery tech company
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.