By GREGORY ZELLER //
Source: InnovateLI
At first glance, it may seem like a minor acquisition, but stay tuned – when Applied DNA Sciences makes “minor acquisitions,” seismic industrial shifts tend to follow.
Witness the Stony Brook-based biotech’s 2015 acquisition of Vandalia Research, a seemingly mundane $1.5 million buyout that targeted not the West Virginia firm, per se, but its proprietary polymerase chain reaction-based technology – cutting-edge expertise that rocketed Applied DNA, known first for supply chain authentication, into the DNA-sequencing stratosphere.
Subsequent acquisitions have followed the same formula – scientific startup with next-gen tech, low-seven-figure price – delivering new tools and techniques to Applied DNA and LineaRX, a 2018 spinoff commercializing the parent’s large-scale, PCR-based manufacturing abilities.
Now add a Canadian biotech – and another ready-for-primetime, market-broadening platform – to the fold.
James Hayward: Unique combination.
Applied DNA has announced the acquisition of Toronto-based Spindle Biotech, a circa-2017 private enterprise developing next-generation RNA-manufacturing technologies.
Terms of the deal include $625,000 in cash (adjusted for debt and transaction expenses) and 750,000 restricted shares of Applied DNA common stock, with another million shares contingent upon commercialization and revenue milestones.
The acquisition also includes a 10-year revenue-sharing program based on sales of the LineaIVT platform – Applied DNA’s trademarked brand combining its linearDNA platform and Spindle’s RNA wizardry – while making room for Spindle cofounder and CEO Aaron Chung, Applied DNA’s new director of nucleic acid platforms.
The size of the target firm, the price and the onboarding of high-level talent are squarely in the parent company’s established parameters. But, as with those past mergers, the acquisition of key technologies raises the bar here, according to Applied DNA Sciences President and CEO James Hayward.
“With this acquisition, we have moved into a unique leadership position based on our combined offering,” Hayward said, labeling that offering “the only platform to leverage the unique attributes of an enzymatically produced IVT template.”
Leveraging a unique, enzymatically produced IVT template, of course, addresses several limitations slowing the conventional, plasmid DNA-based production of messenger RNA, a single-stranded ribonucleic acid involved in protein synthesis – and critical ingredient in dozens of high-profile research efforts.
Don’t kill the messenger: mRNA could be key to curing dozens of diseases (double-strand versions need not apply).
Chief among those limitations: the accidental creation of double-stranded RNA, a major impurity common to conventional methods of producing therapeutic mRNA.
Potentially hazardous contaminants like dsRNA require specialized instrumentation and other expensive quality-control measures, hamstringing already limited supply chains – and the works are slowing just as demand for mRNA-based therapeutics is skyrocketing “across an expanding range of diseases,” according to Hayward.
Enter the new brand, which aims to do for RNA manufacturing what Applied DNA has already done for the large-scale manufacturing of unique DNA strands.
“With the launch of our LineaIVT platform, we seek to solve these manufacturing issues,” Hayward added. “And to enable our customers to produce better mRNA faster.”