Mirus Bio LLC, a biotechnology company in Madison, is being sold to MilliporeSigma, the Burlington, Massachusetts-based U.S. and Canada life science business of Merck KGaA in Darmstadt, Germany, for $600 million.
The deal was announced May 23 by MilliporeSigma and Gamma Biosciences, the live sciences platform of private equity firm KKR that has owned a controlling stake in Mirus Bio since 2021. The transaction is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2024, subject to U.S. regulatory approvals, as well as other customary closing conditions.
Mirus Bio is a developer and provider of transfection products used in the delivery of genetic material into cells. Transfection is a critical process in the development of certain cell and gene therapies, immunotherapies, and in the editing of genes through CRISPR, among a range of other applications.
Merck's life sciences business, which operates as MilliporeSigma in the United States, is a vast life sciences business with more than 28,000 employees and more than 55 total manufacturing and testing sites worldwide. Its portfolio of more than 300,000 products includes services for viral vector manufacturing used in the development of cell and gene therapies. The acquisition of Mirus Bio will expand on that portfolio.
“This acquisition, combined with our comprehensive portfolio, enables us to provide a truly differentiated and integrated offering to meet the growing demand for these life-saving therapies,” Matthias Heinzel, member of the executive board and CEO Life Science, Merck, said in a press release.
Heinzel said that viral vector-based cell and gene therapies have received more than 20 FDA-approvals in the past 10 years with further growth expected over the next several years.
“We have been driving innovation in nucleic acid delivery for two decades,” said Dale Gordon, CEO of Mirus Bio, in the press release. “MilliporeSigma’s broad portfolio, scale, and global reach, combined with our leading transfection reagents, will help take our business to even greater heights and allow us to serve more customers, and ultimately patients, worldwide.”
The transaction will give MilliporeSigma additional operations in Wisconsin. MilliporeSigma also owns St. Louis-based Sigma-Aldrich, which Merck acquired in 2015 for $17 billion in cash. The deal included operations in Milwaukee, Madison, Verona and Sheboygan.
