Life Sciences

Experience

Ropes & Gray’s life sciences team has handled every type of transaction from licensing agreements with a small biotechnology company to large mergers of industry-leading pharmaceutical and medical device companies around the globe. Recent noteworthy transactions include representation of:

• Elanco Animal Health. Represented the lead underwriters in the IPO for Elanco Animal Health, an animal health company that innovates, develops, manufactures and markets products for companion and food animals
• NxStage Medical in its $2 billion acquisition by Fresenius Medical Care, the world’s largest provider of dialysis products and services.
• Shire in its agreement with Baxalta Incorporated to combine the companies for an aggregate consideration of approximately $32 billion. Baxalta, headquartered in Northern Illinois, is a $6 billion global biopharmaceutical leader developing, manufacturing and commercializing therapies for orphan diseases and underserved conditions in hematology, oncology, and immunology.
• Akebia Therapeutics in multiple transformative transactions, totaling an aggregate of nearly $2 billion, through which Akebia partnered its lead drug candidate in key markets, secured financing for completing its Phase III clinical trials, and in-licensed a library of compounds for future research and development.
• Zai Lab Limited, a Chinese-based biotechnology company, in its Series A, B and C preferred equity financings, in which Zai Lab raised an aggregate of $165 million, and in its subsequent $172.5 million initial public offering.
• Pfizer on its $14 billion acquisition of Medivation Inc., a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing small molecules for oncology.
• Bain Capital in its $55 million Series D financing and investment rounds for InflaRx, a German biopharmaceutical company, and in its $70 million convertible preferred PIPE investment in Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, a leading developer of RNAi therapeutics.
• Vertex Pharmaceuticals in its co-development and co-commercialization of CTX001, an investigational gene editing treatment, with CRISPR Therapeutics. The agreement is part of the companies’ previously announced $2.6 billion collaboration aimed at the discovery and development of new gene editing treatments that use the CRISPR/Cas9 technology.
• Boehringer Ingelheim in a $595 million global license and collaboration agreement with AbbVie to jointly develop and commercialize a biologic IL-23 antibody for the treatment of psoriasis and other immunological indications.
• Pacira Pharmaceuticals in First Amendment and APA challenges to FDA’s assertions that the company engaged in “off-label” promotion of its flagship product, a post-surgical analgesic.  As a result, FDA agreed to withdraw its warning letter and revise the label to clarify that the challenged claims were permissible.
• Lantheus Holdings, Inc., parent company of Lantheus Medical Imaging, in its $65 million definitive license agreement with GE Healthcare for the continued Phase III development and worldwide commercialization of flurpiridaz F 18.
• Mersana Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, in connection with its $75 million initial public offering.