Avecia Biotech sold to Nitto Denko
pharmafile | February 8, 2011 | News story | Manufacturing and Production |Â Â Avecia, Avecia Biologics, Avecia Biotechnology, Nitto DenkoÂ
Avecia Biotechnology, which focuses mainly on the development and manufacturing of oligonuceotide medicines, has been acquired by Japanese firm Nitto Denko for an undisclosed sum.
Avecia Biotechnology provides a range of outsourced services for DNA- and RNA-based drugs, spanning preclinical, clinical and commercial services, from its US facility in Milford, Connecticut.
Avecia’s services include the development of analytical methods, process validation, stability studies, quality control, and regulatory support, said Nitto Denko, which is already active in the nucleic acid drugs business with its own Nitto Denko Technical (NDT) subsidiary, based in Oceanside, California.
“Avecia Biotechnology is the market leader in contract manufacturing and related services for nucleic acid drugs,” said the Japanese firm in a statement.
NDT focuses on gene and drug delivery, tissue engineering, imaging and laboratory tools but does not have large-scale manufacturing capacity.
The sale of Avecia Biotechnology to Nitto Denko effectively brings to an end the activities of the UK-headquartered Avecia group, which was created as a fine and specialty chemicals spin-out from the formation of AstraZeneca in 1999.
Over the intervening years it has gradually been broken up into more focused units as the core company narrowed its focus on outsourced services for the development and manufacturing of biologic drugs.
A pharmaceutical custom synthesis unit was sold to India’s Nicholas Piramal in 2005, which closed down the main Huddersfield, UK-based facility last year. 2005 also saw the spin-out of its catalysts business (now called Reaxa), and the sale of a fine chemical unit to KemFine. Resins and inks businesses went to Mitsui and Fujifilm of Japan respectively in 2006 and biodefense and vaccines units were sold to PharmAthene in 2008,
Arguably the most significant development came last year, however, when contract biomanufacturing subsidiary Avecia Biologics was acquired by Merck & Co, signalling the end of Avecia’s strategy for becoming a biotech outsourcing specialist.
Phil Taylor
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