Less than a month af­ter ink­ing a $658 mil­lion deal to buy out BioSpecifics Tech­nolo­gies, En­do Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals is shut­ter­ing mul­ti­ple man­u­fac­tur­ing sites and cut­ting 560 jobs to re­fo­cus on a drug launch in the spring.

The re­struc­tur­ing will oc­cur in phas­es over the next few years, En­do $ENDP said Thurs­day. The Dublin-based biotech will grad­u­al­ly ex­it man­u­fac­tur­ing sites in Irvine, CA and Chest­nut Ridge, NY, and API man­u­fac­tur­ing and bioe­quiv­a­lence study sites in In­dia through the sec­ond half of 2022. Plus, it plans on trim­ming ad­min­is­tra­tive costs by out­sourc­ing “cer­tain trans­ac­tion pro­cess­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.”

All in all, about 560 staffers will be on the chop­ping block by 2023. En­do ex­pects to save be­tween $85 mil­lion and $95 mil­lion per year, pre-tax. The com­pa­ny’s stock was up about 5% in pre-mar­ket trad­ing Fri­day, at $5.13.

“These ac­tions are con­sis­tent with our strate­gic pri­or­i­ty to rein­vent how we work and sup­port our as­so­ci­at­ed strate­gic pri­or­i­ty to ex­pand and en­hance our port­fo­lio by en­abling rein­vest­ment in­to build­ing a more dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed and durable prod­uct port­fo­lio. We be­lieve these ac­tions will fur­ther po­si­tion En­do for long-term suc­cess,” pres­i­dent and CEO Blaise Cole­man said in a state­ment.

The news comes just months af­ter Cole­man took the helm from for­mer CEO Paul Cam­pan­el­li, who an­nounced plans to step down last No­vem­ber. The big re­fo­cus is for Qwo, which En­do says is the first FDA-ap­proved in­jectable treat­ment for cel­lulite ex­pect­ed to hit the shelves next spring.

Un­der a 2004 agree­ment, BioSpecifics was set to re­ceive roy­al­ties from Qwo and En­do’s oth­er col­la­ge­nase-based ther­a­py Xi­aflex, a shot used to treat Dupuytren’s con­trac­ture and Pey­ronie’s dis­ease. But in­stead, En­do agreed last month to pur­chase all of BioSpecifics’ out­stand­ing stock for about $540 mil­lion, valu­ing the com­pa­ny at $88.50 per share — about a 45% pre­mi­um to the com­pa­ny’s share price be­fore the agree­ment.

SVB Leerink an­a­lyst Ami Fa­dia ques­tioned the tim­ing of the buy­out, not­ing that En­do is deal­ing with un­set­tled opi­oid lit­i­ga­tion. In 2018, the FDA re­quest­ed that En­do take its opi­oid pain med­ica­tion Opana ER off the mar­ket, af­ter de­ter­min­ing “the ben­e­fits of the drug may no longer out­weigh its risks.” San Fran­cis­co filed claims in Sep­tem­ber that sev­er­al com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing En­do, fraud­u­lent­ly mar­ket­ed or failed to con­trol the sale of opi­oids. The biotech al­so set­tled opi­oid-re­lat­ed claims in Ok­la­homa for $8.75 mil­lion in Jan­u­ary, and in Ohio for $10 mil­lion in Au­gust.

“One could ar­gue that giv­en En­do’s cash po­si­tion (~$1.8B as of 2Q20) and no sig­nif­i­cant debt pay­ments re­quired un­til 2024, the com­pa­ny was in a strong po­si­tion to do BD, and the op­ti­mist could read in­to this an­nounce­ment that the com­pa­ny may have some con­fi­dence in­to its abil­i­ty to rea­son­ably re­solve the opi­oid lit­i­ga­tion, but this is dif­fi­cult to know for sure, and the com­pa­ny is al­ready lev­ered at ~5x,” Fa­dia wrote about En­do’s BioSpecifics ac­qui­si­tion last month.

Back in 2018, En­do agreed to buy Som­er­set and its CD­MO in In­dia for $190 mil­lion, but didn’t fol­low through af­ter get­ting tied up in “cer­tain reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals,” ac­cord­ing to Cam­pan­el­li.

A California judge will allow a plaintiff in a state court case to introduce expert testimony connecting a potential carcinogen in former blockbuster medicine Zantac to cancer.

The order was handed down on Thursday from state judge Evelio Grillo, who is now allowing both parties to introduce expert testimony in an upcoming trial after what’s known as a Sargon hearing, where a judge determines the admissibility of expert witnesses and expert opinions.

Abbott is renewing its concussion awareness campaign, weeks after the company received FDA clearance for its lab-based traumatic brain injury (TBI) blood test.

The unbranded campaign features three generations of the Melon family — animated talking melons who slip on toys or take a spill while playing pickleball.

“Don’t mess with your melon. If you hit it, get it checked,” a narrator says.