Matthew Patterson. Audentes

In­side Astel­las' $3B Au­dentes gene ther­a­py ac­qui­si­tion: cod­ed mes­sages, a bid­ding war and $77M for the CEO

Word of Astel­las’ first multi­bil­lion-dol­lar of­fer was passed in cod­ed lan­guage at a palm tree-lined Park Hy­att in San Diego, where one of gene ther­a­py’s biggest sum­mits was about to be­gin.

Clau­dia Mitchell had been to the an­nu­al Meet­ing on the Mesa be­fore. Her pre­sen­ta­tion there as CEO of Uni­ver­sal Cells in Sep­tem­ber 2017 had helped se­cure a col­lab­o­ra­tion with and ul­ti­mate­ly a $100 mil­lion buy­out from Astel­las with­in 5 months. Now, she worked for the Japanase phar­ma gi­ant and she had word for Matthew Pat­ter­son, CEO of Au­dentes and con­fer­ence chair­man: A busi­ness pro­pos­al was com­ing; she didn’t spec­i­fy what.

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