Patheon, has agreed to acquire IRIX Pharmaceuticals, a company headquartered in Florence, South Carolina., which provides contract manufacturing of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).The transaction is expected to close in the next 60 days, subject to customary regulatory reviews.

IRIX focuses on difficult-to-manufacture APIs from early and late development through commercial launch. With the acquisition, Patheon secures additional API development and manufacturing services in the US, including high-potency (SafeBridge Class IV certified) and controlled substances (Schedule 1-4) IRIX has commercial API manufacturing at sites in Greenville and Florence, South Carolina.

The acquisition is the latest in a series of acquisitions for Patheon. In 2014, DPx Holdings B.V., privately owned by JLL Partners and Royal DSM and the parent company of Patheon, completed the transaction to acquire Gallus BioPharmaceuticals, LLC, a contract manufacturing company specializing in biologics. Patheon's biologic drug substance business, a unit of DPx Holdings, includes four global facilities in Europe, Australia, and North America. The addition of Gallus BioPharmaceuticals provided Patheon with additional biologics capabilities, namely process development as well as clinical- and commercial-scale manufacturing of mammalian cell-culture derived products. Patheon gained drug-substance biologics capability with the merger of Patheon and DSM Pharmaceutical Products to form DPx Holdings, a deal which was completed in March 2014, and the subsequent integration of the Biosolutions and Biologics businesses of DSM Pharmaceutical Products into Patheon.

Also, earlier this month, Patheon agreed to acquire Agere Pharmaceuticals, a privately held contract development and manufacturing organization, headquartered in Bend, Oregon. Agere specializes in solubilization technologies and related science to improve the bioavailability of drugs. With the acqusition, Agere’s Bend, Oregon facility is expected to serve as a solubility center of excellence and be part of Patheon's pharmaceutical development services (PDS) operations. In the last year, Patheon has expanded its capabilities through several key acquisitions, including the addition of a large-scale facility in Greenville, North Carolina. Patheon’s PDS solutions offer advanced scientific and preformulation services for characterizing drug substances, developing and implementing laboratory methodologies, and generating data to enable investigational new drug filings.

Source: Patheon