CSL stacks up $4.5B in chips — with a $200M ante — to wa­ger on the next-gen mR­NA wave

Aus­tralian phar­ma gi­ant CSL is mak­ing a late bid for mR­NA glo­ry, and they’ve lined up one of the al­so-ran US Covid-19 biotechs tout­ing their own par­tic­u­lar tech twist to part­ner with.

CSL Se­qirus, the big vac­cines arm of the glob­al play­er, is shelling out $200 mil­lion in cash and putting up an­oth­er $4.3 bil­lion in mile­stones — in­clud­ing a hefty $1.3 bil­lion for de­vel­op­ment goals — to al­ly it­self with Arc­turus Ther­a­peu­tics. Joe Payne’s San Diego-based biotech — where Payne had to mount a counter-coup to wrest back con­trol of the com­pa­ny from some re­bel­lious board mem­bers in 2018 — is just com­ing off a $63 mil­lion BAR­DA con­tract, where they’re putting their mR­NA tech to work on the flu.

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