In March, Cor­den­Phar­ma was list­ed among the phar­ma gi­ants picked by the Ger­man gov­ern­ment as re­cip­i­ents of more than $3 bil­lion to en­sure that the coun­try had enough pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty to make Covid-19 vac­cines for fu­ture out­breaks. In­vestors at As­torg and ICIG seemed to have liked what they saw and an­nounced Mon­day that the pri­vate eq­ui­ty firms have teamed up to ac­quire the CD­MO.

With the ac­qui­si­tion, As­torg and ICIG will get a rapid­ly grow­ing com­pa­ny thanks to its in­volve­ment in the mR­NA vac­cine game. Cor­den has al­so po­si­tioned it­self as a key play­er in the world of pep­tides and high-po­ten­cy com­pounds for on­col­o­gy. It picked up Vi­for Phar­ma’s drug man­u­fac­tur­ing wing in De­cem­ber 2021, land­ing op­er­a­tions in Fri­bourg and Et­tin­gen, Switzer­land, and Lis­bon, Por­tu­gal.

As­torg will get those three sites, plus 2,600 em­ploy­ees in an­oth­er eight sites across the US and Eu­rope, as a part of the deal. The In­ter­na­tion­al Chem­i­cal In­vestors Group con­clud­ed that Cor­den would be best de­vel­oped with a part­ner in its next growth phase, the com­pa­ny said in a re­lease.

Ju­dith Char­p­en­tier

Cor­den serves 250-plus phar­ma and biotech com­pa­nies spe­cial­iz­ing in pep­tides, lipids and car­bo­hy­drates for mR­NA vac­cines and ther­a­peu­tics, high­ly po­tent and on­col­o­gy, in­jecta­bles, and small mol­e­cules. It of­fers ser­vices from ear­ly-stage de­vel­op­ment, all the way to large-scale com­mer­cial man­u­fac­tur­ing.

“The trans­ac­tion is the re­sult of our the­mat­ic sourc­ing ef­fort in phar­ma ser­vices. We iden­ti­fied the com­pa­ny as a lead­ing CD­MO fo­cused on some of the most promis­ing ar­eas of phar­ma R&D, and with a strong cus­tomer fo­cus and unique in­no­va­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties,” said Ju­dith Char­p­en­tier, head of health­care at As­torg.

Fi­nan­cial terms of the deal were not dis­closed.

In a state­ment, Cor­den­Phar­ma CEO Michael Quirm­bach said:

I would like to per­son­al­ly thank Patrick Schnitzer and Dr. Achim Rie­mann for their trust, sup­port and com­mit­ment over the years in sup­port­ing Cor­den­Phar­ma’s growth and strate­gic vi­sion to be­come a lead­ing CD­MO. To­geth­er with As­torg we will con­tin­ue this ex­cit­ing jour­ney and fur­ther ac­cel­er­ate the growth as an or­ga­ni­za­tion across our 5 tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms.

Last sum­mer, Cor­den­Phar­ma was in the news when No­var­tis was hand­ed a com­plete re­sponse let­ter for its PC­SK9 drug in­clisir­an. The FDA could not car­ry out for­eign in­spec­tions dur­ing the peak of the pan­dem­ic, so prob­lems that arose at Cor­den’s Mi­lan, Italy site couldn’t be re­solved in time. But the firm con­tin­ued to sup­ply in­clisir­an for coun­tries out­side the US.

AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo’s antibody-drug conjugate Enhertu scored its second approval in less than a week, this time for a subset of lung cancer patients.

Enhertu received accelerated approval on Thursday to treat adults with unresectable or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors have activating HER2 (ERBB2) mutations, and who have already received a prior systemic therapy.

After controversially spinning out its talc liabilities and filing for bankruptcy in an attempt to settle 38,000 lawsuits, Johnson & Johnson is now changing up the formula for its baby powder products.

J&J is beginning the transition to an all cornstarch-based baby powder portfolio, the pharma giant announced on Thursday — just months after a federal judge ruled in favor of its “Texas two-step” bankruptcy to settle allegations that its talc products contained asbestos and caused cancer. An appeals court has since agreed to revisit that case.

As Ireland continues to see more investments and building projects from pharma companies, another contender is looking to place more investment in the Emerald Isle.

According to a report from The Irish Times on Friday, Abbott Laboratories is investing €440 million, or about $451 million, to build a new manufacturing plant in Kilkenny, located in the country’s southeast, to make more of its glucose monitors.