JSR Life Sciences (JLS) announced today that JSR Corporation has agreed to purchase Crown Bioscience International (TPEx: ticker 6554) at 12 Billion New Taiwan Dollar, a global drug discovery and development services company providing translational platforms to advanced oncology, inflammation, cardiovascular and metabolic disease research. This acquisition marks JSR’s largest life sciences-focused investment to date, extending the company’s portfolio to include industry-leading contract research and development capabilities, and ability to develop impactful solutions for pharma.

As a premier contract research organization (CRO), CrownBio has deep industry relationships and a global footprint that will complement JSR’s already global presence. Upon completion of the acquisition, JSR Life Sciences’ will enjoy a full suite of integrated capabilities that extend from pure research, to drug discovery, diagnostics development, cell line development and process development, through to GMP manufacturing.

“We are positioning to be the clear choice for innovation-driven strategic partnerships,” said Eric R. Johnson, President of JSR’s Life Sciences Division. “CrownBio, and its science-rich approach, is an ideal fit to support that goal. We’re bringing together innovative competencies that will lead to better solutions for pharma and improve their ability to take therapeutics to the market.”

As focus on personalized medicine continues to increase, CROs are turning into scientific leaders. Translational platforms, bioinformatics and modeling capabilities, like CrownBio’s patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models, are becoming fundamentally important to the development and commercialization of diagnostics and therapeutics. JSR’s forecast, based on consultation with CrownBio’s management team, is for the company to realize Revenue and EBITDA margin of 90 and 20 M USD respectively in 2018, with the understanding that such projected financial information may vary from actual results.

JSR has had extensive M&A activity in recent years. The 2015 majority interest acquisitions of
contract development and manufacturing organization KBI Biopharma, Inc. and MBL Corporation, and the 2017 acquisition of mammalian cell line development pioneer Selexis SA, combine to be a strong technology engine for innovation.

JSR envisions that CrownBio’s development capabilities will enhance the contribution of JKiC, the company’s Japan-based industry-academia-medicine collaboration hub, by providing the tools and expertise to translate leading-edge research into tomorrow’s medicines