Writer: Joshua Andino
2 min read March 2023— It’s been a busy week for Philadelphia’s life sciences sector, as a number of mergers and acquisitions have closed over the last few days despite wider economic headwinds.
Philadelphia, thanks to its robust ecosystem of higher education institutions and the economic heft of biopharmaceutical companies present in the market that include AstraZeneca, Merck, GSK, Bristol Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson, continues to see M&A activity in the sector. Economic headwinds, particularly inflation and interest rates, have slowed deals in other more sensitive sectors such as retail. Now that the strong demand of the pandemic era has mostly faded, notes PwC, the pharmaceutical, medical, and biotech spaces are still expected to have an active 2023 as companies – and hungry investors, begin to find new ways to drive growth and deploy capital. PwC’s forecast notes, “We expect to see activity in areas of high expected future growth in 2023. Pharma and biotech M&A will continue to focus on oncology and immunology, but other areas such as central nervous system and cardiovascular diseases as well as vaccines will see interest.”
Exemplifying the trend, Adaptimmune Therapeutics (NASDAQ: ADAP), cell therapy developer with offices in Philadelphia and the U.K., recently announced its acquisition of TCR² Therapeutics (NASDAQ: TCRR), a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech company in an all-stock deal. Both companies are working on treating multiple cancers, with Adaptimmune working on developing afami-cel, a TCR T-Cell therapy for solid tumors, with the aim of treating synovial sarcoma. Shares of both Adaptimmune and TCR² started up today, with the former rising to $1.29 in the mid-morning while TCR² hit $1.63 a share.
In another all-stock transaction, Sesen Bio, Inc. (NASDAQ: SESN), also of Cambridge, Massachusetts, will merge with Philadelphia’s Carisma Therapeutics. While the intent to merge was announced in September, the deal closed on March 7. As of today, the company is now trading under CARM on the NASDAQ and opened at $5.39 a share. It has a $140 million cash runway through 2024 in anticipation of multiple clinical readouts across the gamut of Carisma’s ongoing trials.
Finally, and a few minutes outside of Philadelphia proper, Swedesboro-based Wedgewood Pharmacy acquired the Colorado-based Front Range Laboratories, a full service testing lab. The deal closed on February 23, with the terms kept private.
Marcy Bliss, CEO of the animal health-focused pharmacy, said in a statement that Wedgewood had been a longstanding client of Front Range Laboratories, and that the acquisition would help further drive the pharmacy’s capacity to meet growing demand. “As we expand our reach in different sectors of compounding pharmacy, upcoming regulatory changes will increase demand across our companies for sterility and stability testing. By investing in a proven, high-quality in-house testing laboratory, we will be able to decrease testing turnaround time, better control our costs, and gain greater flexibility to respond rapidly to changes in demand. We will, of course, continue to do business with other specialized, high-quality testing laboratories. All of these will provide direct benefit to the more than 72,000 veterinarians in 29,000 practices we serve and their customers,” said Bliss.
For more information, visit:
https://www.tcr2.com/
https://www.adaptimmune.com/
https://carismatx.com/
https://sesenbio.com/
