MDS completes contract research exit
pharmafile | February 15, 2010 | News story | Research and Development |Â Â CRO, mdsÂ
MDS has completed the sell-off of its contract research and development business – MDS Pharma Services – with the signing of two agreements valued at approximately $45 million plus minority equity interests.
As a consequence of the transactions, MDS Pharma Services headquarters in King of Prussia, Philadelphia, is to close with the loss of up to 50 jobs, and the company will decommission an early clinical research and bioanalysis operations in Montreal which employs around 225 people.
The first agreement will see MDS’ discovery and preclinical operations, including facilities in the US, France and Taiwan, taken over by contract research organisation Ricerca Biosciences.
Ricerca said the transaction would boost its position in molecular profiling, pharmacology/drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics (DMPK) and drug safety assessment.
The expansion will allow it to provide discovery and preclinical services “from intellectual property to investigational new drugs,” according to the firm’s chief executive Ian Lennox.
At the same time, a newly-formed company backed by private equity firms Bain Capital Ventures and SV Life Sciences is taking over MDS Pharma Services’ early-stage development and regulatory services activities, which include a total of five development facilities in across the US, Northern Ireland and Switzerland.
MDS Inc has been looking for a buyer for the Pharma Services division since September 2009 when it announced its intention to focus on its MDS Nordion business, which makes radioactive isotopes for medical applications and sterilization technologies.
Last May the company offloaded its late-stage clinical operations to INC Research in a $50 million deal, and followed that up in October 2009 with the sale of its central laboratory business to the parent company of contract research organisation Chiltern, the private equity firm Czura Thornton for $8 million plus performance-related milestone payments.
Earlier this month, MDS announced the sale of its MDS Analytical Technologies business, which manufactures laboratory equipment, to Danaher Corp for $650 million in cash.
That deal was able to go ahead after the company settled litigation with another would-be purchaser, Perkin Elmer, with which MDS had a joint-venture to make coupled plasma mass spectrometers.
The last two transactions in the divestment programme are expected to close within the next two months.
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