Mid-sized pharma player Strides Arcolab Ltd is acquiring 70% in Accel Partners-backed Inbiopro Solutions, a Bangalore-based biotechnology firm, the company said in its communique to the exchanges. This acquisition marks Strides’ foray into biologics and gives the firm immediate access to a pipeline of eight products estimated to have global sales of over $28 billion. Commercialization of these products is expected to begin in 2013. The acquisition will entail investment of Rs 65 crore over three years to be used for development and commercialization of products.
Strides also gets access to both, high exression mammalian and microbial platform-based development capabilities. The acquisition gives Strides a three-year leap start in the biosimiliar industry which is characterised by specialized expertise in recombinant DNA technology and manufacturing process development with stringent and well defined regulatory guidelines, resulting in long gestation periods for product development. There is synergy in terms of combining Inbiopro’s development capabilities and Strides’ injectable manufacturing/regulatory and commercialisation capabilities.
Inbiopro, set up in 2007 by a team of three biotech professionals, has delivered ready to market biosimilar recombinant therapeutic proteins and vaccines to its pharmaceutical marketing partners. In 2008, Inbiopro raised an undisclosed amount of early stage of funding from Accel Partners.
The biologics market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8-10% in 2010-2025 against a CAGR of 4-6% for total pharmaceutical market. Biosimilar market expected to touch $13 billion by 2015. Biologics market expected to touch $227 billion by 2015 against $126 billion in 2009.