A subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee met recently to review the current state of antitrust enforcement in the U.S., and heard from both the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) about their enforcement activities. FTC chairwoman Lina Khan acknowledged that the agency had coordinated with the European Commission about the transaction between Illumina Inc., and Grail Inc., activities which she claimed were nothing more than an attempt to promote regulatory efficiency.
Galvanize Therapeutics Inc. scooped up $100 million in a series B funding round aimed at advancing its pulsed electric field (PEF) energy platform. Completion of the financing coincided with the merger of Galvanize with two other med-tech startups built around the same core intellectual property portfolio: Gala Therapeutics Inc. and Galaxy Medical Inc.
The Biden administration’s views of mergers and acquisitions have veered sharply from those of the previous administration, but Jonathan Kanter, assistant U.S. attorney general, said recently that there is more to come. Kanter said the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will shortly publish draft guidelines that would place the burden on the parties to these M&A transactions to prove the transaction is not anticompetitive, upending the historical presumption that the plaintiff is liable for demonstrating the anticompetitive nature of the proposed transaction.
Thirteen months after Illumina Inc. and Grail Inc. merged, prior to regulatory approval, the deal has taken a turn for the worse. The prognosis looked better following an administrative law judge’s ruling Sept. 1 against the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit seeking to block the transaction, but the European Commission (EC) issued a decision Sept. 6 prohibiting the deal based on the likelihood that a merger would stifle innovation and limit choices in the early cancer detection liquid biopsy market.
Second Sight Medical Products Inc. completed a reverse merger with Nano Precision Medical Inc. which leaves the controversial visual prosthetics company holding 23% of the new company, now called Vivani Medical Inc. The deal brings together two unlikely partners, with Nano Precision targeting development of miniaturized, subdermal drug implants for chronic diseases such as diabetes, while Second Sight has focused on bringing its Orion visual prosthetic device to market. The company now trades on the Nasdaq under the symbol VANI.
As amounts raised through financings are significantly shy of last year, med-tech deals and M&As appear strong, with digital health dominating the landscape.
Boston Scientific Corp. acquired privately held Obisidio Inc., adding the company’s gel embolic material (GEM) technology to its portfolio. GEM is a ready-to-use, semi-solid material that conforms to the vasculature in which it is placed to immediately obstruct or reduce blood flow to a tumor or abnormality or stop hemorrhaging.
Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc. signed a $170 million deal to acquire all the outstanding shares of molecular diagnostics subsidiary Curiosity Diagnostics SpZoo from Scope Fluidics SA. The deal consists of approximately $100 million in cash and up to $70 million in future milestone payments. The pre-commercial platform company is the developer of a CE-marked 15-minute point-of-care (POC) rapid PCR system which tests for SARS-CoV-2 virus and methicillin-resistant or-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus bacteria (MRSA/MSSA).
