Eagle Pharmaceuticals, headquartered in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, has agreed to acquire Arsia Therapeutics, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-headquartered early-stage biotechnology firm with proprietary viscosity-reducing technology and formulation expertise, in a deal worth up to $78 million

The acquisition will boost Eagle’s drug-formulation technology for biologics, including for biobetters.Biobetters express superiority in one or more aspects of their clinical profile compared with the reference product with potential improvement in safety, efficacy, or route of administration.

Under the agreement, Eagke will pay approximately $30 million at closing, $27.3 million of which will be paid in cash and $2.7 million of which will be paid in Eagle common stock. Eagle has also agreed to pay up to $48 million in additional payments upon the completion of certain milestones, for aggregate potential payments of $78 million. The closing of the acquisition is expected to occur within a week, subject to the satisfaction of various customary closing conditions.

Arsia founders and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors, Dr. Robert Langer and Dr. Alexander Klibanov, as well as other members of the Arsia team, have simultaneously entered into agreements effective on the closing of the acquisition to develop new formulations and work on delivery challenges in the large-molecules space with Eagle. In addition to acquiring Arsia’s technology platform, Eagle said it plans to establish a biologics innovation center in Cambridge.

Source: Eagle Pharmaceuticals