Sh­iono­gi takes an­tibi­ot­ic mak­er un­der its wing in $100M cash buy­out

Japan’s Sh­iono­gi has struck a deal to ac­quire San Diego-based an­tibi­ot­ic mak­er Qpex Bio­phar­ma, pay­ing $100 mil­lion cash in bag­ging sev­er­al clin­i­cal-stage pro­grams that it hopes can ad­dress bac­te­r­i­al re­sis­tance to an­tibi­otics.

Qpex was spun out of The Med­i­cines Com­pa­ny back in 2018 around a pre­clin­i­cal pipeline and plat­form tech­nol­o­gy that was left out of The Med­i­cines Com­pa­ny’s di­vesti­ture of in­fec­tious dis­ease work to Melin­ta. The top can­di­date is now xerubor­bac­tam, a be­ta-lac­ta­mase in­hibitor that’s be­ing de­vel­oped in com­bi­na­tion with oth­er an­tibi­otics, both in oral and in­jectable form.

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