This week's life sciences industry news includes one company's efforts to diversify beyond diagnostics, the closing of the year's first IPO by a local biopharmaceutical company, an expanding product development partnership, a Covid-19 research grant awarded to local scientists by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and more.
Here is the roundup:
AnPac Bio-Medical Science Co.
The life sciences company, which has operations in Montgomery County and China, is expanding beyond its core business of developing cancer screening and diagnostic products.
AnPac (NASDAQ: ANPC) has entered into a definitive agreement — through its subsidiary Foodbase Group Inc. — to acquire a group of affiliated companies engaged in developing, marketing and selling real estate in Savannah Lakes Village for $28 million. Savannah Lakes Village is a planned community with more than 2,000 buildable lots in McCormick County, South Carolina.
Under the terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the second quarter of 2023, Foodbase is acquiring SLV Windfall Group, Windfall SLV Development and SLV Windfall Management.
"We believe this acquisition will expand the scope of our operations meaningfully and bring significant value to our shareholders," said Haohan Xu, co-CEO of AnPac, in a statement.
AnPac also this week announced it is buying GISN Ltd., a provider of technical support services for enterprises looking to transform from a traditional operating model to a digital operating model, for $17 million in stock. AnPac said the deal will improve the efficiency of its planned e-commerce operations.
Xu said Foodbase is in the process of acquiring some business-to-business e-commerce food companies, and the acquisition of the Savannah Lakes Village project will potentially give the company an opportunity to use 500 acres of undeveloped land to build "low-cost, smart" food warehouse and distribution centers.
"We also plan to build and sell residential properties with great profit potential, and use the profits generated from the sale of these residential properties to fund the construction of the smart food warehouse and distribution centers," he said.
The core business of AnPac, which holds155 patents, is performing cancer screening and detection tests, including cancer differentiation analysis, bio-chemical, immunological, and genomics tests. The company's U.S. operations are at the Spring House Innovation Park in Lower Gwynedd.
Mineralys Therapeutics
The Radnor biopharmaceutical company closed its initial public stock offering, which brought in $220.8 million after underwriters exercised their full option to purchase 1.8 million shares to cover over-allotments.
Mineralys (NASDAQ: MLYS) ended up selling $13.8 million shares of its common stock at $16 per share. Its stock closed Thursday at $17.75 per share.
The company plans to use the proceeds from the IPO to further advance its lead new drug candidate, lorundrostat, an experimental treatment for patients with uncontrolled hypertension.
Mineralys is the first Philadelphia-area life sciences company to go public through an IPO in 2023.
BofA Securities, Evercore ISI, Stifel, Guggenheim Securities, Credit Suisse and Wells Fargo Securities served as joint book-running managers for the offering.
West Pharmaceutical Services
The Exton drug container and delivery system manufacturer has expanded its collaboration with Corning Inc. (NYSE: GLW), first formed in January 2022, and launched the first product resulting from the partnership.
The collaboration was expanded to include exclusive distribution rights for Corning Valor Glass vials.
The first product being launched through the partnership is called the West Ready Pack, which combines Valor vials with West's NovaPure stoppers. The resulting container comes in a sterile "ready-to-use" format that can be directly introduced into filling operations. It also features the ability to maintain cold storage "container closure integrity" when cooled to, and stored at, -80 degrees celsius.
Chris Ryan, vice president, containment and glass systems at West (NYSE: WST), called the West Ready Pack the "first of many products to come."
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
The Philadelphia pediatric medical center has received a $2.3 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support Covid-19 research.
The funds will be used by CHOP researchers to advance mitochondrial medicine research and help decode the pandemic puzzle.
Researchers at CHOP's Center for Mitochondrial and Epigenomic Medicine are studying if mitochondrial variation is an important factor in determining why certain patients have more severe symptoms to SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Dr. Douglas Wallace, a geneticist and the center's director, said CHOP researchers have already demonstrated that SARS-CoV-2 infections have a "powerful adverse effect" on patients' mitochondrial function. Mitochondria, small structures in a cell, convert chemical energy from the food we eat into an energy form that the cell can use.
Wallace said CHOP is hopeful the Gates Foundation grant will help researchers identify new approaches for mitigating the adverse impact of Covid-19.
Quick Hits
Berwyn-based Virpax Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: VRPX) said it completed FDA-required preclinical toxicology studies for its licensed molecular envelope technology. The technology is designed to enhances the delivery of Virpax’s non-addictive pain product candidate and its epilepsy product candidate. The molecular envelope technology licensed to Virpax was developed by Nanomerics Ltd., a United Kingdom-based nanotechnology research and development company.
