Inhale Therapeutics set to acquire Shearwater in $191 million deal

Inhale Therapeutic Systems has entered into an agreement to acquireprivately-held Shearwater Corp, a firm that specializes in advanced PEGylation technology "for enhancing delivery performance of most major drug classes," the firms have said. Under the terms of the deal, Inhale will pay $72.5 million in cash and four million shares of newly-issued stock to Shearwater shareholders, giving the acquisition a total value of approximately $191 million. Once the transaction is completed, Shearwater will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Inhale.

Inhale said that the addition of the PEGylation technology significantly expands its early- and late-stage clinical pipeline. The acquisition will boost the the firm's pipeline with 11 drugs, three of which have completed clinical trials and are in the pre-approval stage.

The most advanced of projects are a joint venture with Roche, involving Pegasys (peginterferon alfa-2a) for hepatitis C, and PEG-hGHra with Pharmacia Corp for acromegaly. Shearwater also supplies PEG to Schering-Plough for use in PEG-Intron (peginterferon alfa-2b), also for hepatitis C, and has collaborations in place with an additional nine pharmaceutical companies, including Regeneron, Maxygen and United Therapeutics.