Nanjing Jianyou Pharma to Acquire Meitheal Pharmaceuticals for $95 Million, Gaining 12 FDA-Approved Injectables

Recently, VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) learned via Business Wire that Nanjing King-friend Biochemical Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (Kingfriend) announced the acquisition of pharmaceutical company Meitheal Pharmaceuticals (Meitheal) for $95 million. The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

Upon completion of the acquisition, Kingfriend will hold an 83.33% stake in Meitheal Pharmaceuticals.

Headquartered in Chicago, USA, Meitheal Pharmaceuticals is a specialized pharmaceutical company. The company primarily develops generic injectable medications, providing patients with high-quality, cost-effective drugs to meet market demands. Currently, Meitheal manufactures a diverse portfolio of products, including antibiotics, anticoagulants, muscle relaxants, and chemotherapy agents. The company’s mission is to improve patient outcomes and advance research in injectable drug formulations.

Since its inception, Meitheal has focused on the development, manufacturing, and sales of injectable pharmaceuticals. The company has 12 FDA-approved products on the market, including bleomycin, cytarabine, methocarbamol, carboplatin, and oxaliplatin, which are used to treat infectious diseases, common critical care conditions, and cancers. Furthermore, Meitheal is continuously improving its product formulations by launching single-dose and multi-dose packaged medications, ready-to-use pre-filled syringes, and premixed bagged reagents. As of the end of June 2019, the company had 49 products in the R&D pipeline, with 24 products under FDA review. Meitheal stated that it will launch eight new products this year.

Established in 2000 and headquartered in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, Kingfriend is a leading pharmaceutical enterprise. The company is primarily engaged in the research and development, production, and sales of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and finished dosage forms (FDFs). Kingfriend operates three FDA-approved manufacturing bases in China and employs over 500 staff members, including more than 100 R&D experts. Listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2017, the company conducts business across multiple regions, including China, the United States, the European Union, and South America, breaking through the sales bottleneck for Chinese sterile preparations in the U.S. market.

Kingfriend has established the Jiangsu Provincial Engineering Technology Research Center for Glycosaminoglycan Biochemical Pharmaceuticals and maintains close collaborations with China Pharmaceutical University, the National Glycoengineering Research Center at Shandong University, U.S.-based Sagent Pharmaceuticals, and Taiwan’s ScinoPharm, among other universities and enterprises. These partnerships have led to the formation of the Hong Kong Kingfriend Glycosaminoglycan Technology Research Center. Leveraging its strengths in talent and capital for new drug research and development, the company actively promotes the commercialization of scientific and technological achievements.

Senior executives at Kingfriend stated, “Kingfriend has always been committed to providing high-quality medicines to patients worldwide, and we look forward to collaborating with Meitheal. Kingfriend will leverage its advanced drug manufacturing platform to support Meitheal’s growth, helping it expand its scale and presence in the generic drug market, thereby better meeting patients’ healthcare needs.”

Tom Shea, Founder and CEO of Meitheal, stated, “We are delighted to join a global pharmaceutical manufacturing team such as Kingfriend. Meitheal is committed not only to producing high-quality injectable medications but also to reducing healthcare costs for patients. We are confident that, leveraging Kingfriend’s pharmaceutical manufacturing capabilities and its active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) supply chain, Meitheal’s business will achieve further growth.”

(Compiled by Xu Xiaoxue)