Date: 2015-02-11
Type of information: Company acquisition
Acquired company: Glycovaxyn (Switzerland)
Acquiring company: GSK (UK)
Amount: $190 million
Terms: * On February 11, 2015, GlycoVaxyn, a spin off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), announced today that it has signed an agreement with its development partner and shareholder GSK to sell all remaining shares to GSK.
Details: GlycoVaxyn’s innovative biological conjugation platform originates from ETH Zurich and enables the development of a new generation of conjugate vaccines against major bacterial infections. The company, which entered into research collaboration with GSK in 2012, is in Phase I clinical trials with a vaccine candidate against E. coli infections and is expected to initiate a Phase I for a vaccine against Shigellosis (severe diarrhea) in the US in the first quarter 2015 with the financial support of the Wellcome Trust.
GSK and the GlycoVaxyn management team will work together over the next few months to develop ways of working that will maintain the autonomy and agility of GlycoVaxyn which will be strengthened by the scale and support that GSK can provide. GlycoVaxyn currently employs around 50 people.
GlycoVaxyn has a broad pipeline of several bioconjugate vaccine candidates, including partnered development programs with GSK and Janssen Pharmaceuticals. The company has raised approximately CHF 50 million of equity funding and has top-tier private investors including Sofinnova Partners, Index Ventures and Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners. Glycovaxyn is Sofinnova Partners’ 14th exit/IPO in the 24 months, for a total enterprise value of $3.4 billion. In the past five years, Sofinnova Partners has generated exits and IPOs totaling $6.5 billion in enterprise value with transactions including the trade sale of Omthera Pharmaceuticals to AZ or of EOS to Clovis Oncology and the Nasdaq listing of DBV Technologies (DBVT) or of Ascendis Pharma (ASND). Glycovaxyn was the second investment of BioDiscovery 3, a specialized life science investment fund managed byEdmond de Rothschild Investment Partners. Raised in 2008, the Fund has invested from 2008 to 2012 in a portfolioof 14 companies. So far seven of these companies have been sold through private transactions, four have been listed on public financial markets, and the remaining three are still privately held active companies.
Related: Infectious diseases
