Contract drug developer AMRI ($AMRI) bolstered its client roster with three new agreements making use of its R&D, manufacturing and marketing divisions.
In the first, AMRI signed a deal with Eagle Pharmaceuticals ($EGRX) to jointly develop injectable drugs for FDA approval and eventual marketing. Eagle's business model relies on taking commercially successful treatments and reformulating them to get around existing limitations. Under the deal with AMRI, the contractor will handle manufacturing throughout the development process while Eagle takes care of research, and AMRI is due payments based on each product's eventual sales.
Secondly, AMRI secured a three-year contract extension with an unnamed pharma partner, the company said, a deal focused on chemistry and drug discovery. The initial deal, signed in 2011, has been extended from its expiry date in 2018 to now run through 2021, AMRI said. The partnership is based on what AMRI calls "in-sourcing," through which the company places its own scientists alongside its clients' employees in an effort to accelerate the R&D process.
Third, AMRI inked an agreement with the New York Center for Nanomedicine Research, or NYCNMR, that gives the company access to its new partner's technology. NYCNMR provides nanotechnologies for drug discovery and formulation, and AMRI is now on board to market the group's services to its own biopharma clients. Like AMRI, NYCNMR does business out of the Buffalo Medical Innovation and Commercialization Hub, a public-private initiative designed to boost the life sciences industry in western New York.
The deals follow a flurry of acquisitions for AMRI, which has spent nearly $400 million on buyouts over the past two years amid cost cuts and a gradual shift away from drug discovery and into manufacturing.
This year, AMRI returned to consistent profitability after a string of quarters in the red, and the company is expecting more than 50% annual revenue growth in 2015.
- read the Eagle release
- here's the extension announcement
- get more on the NYCNMR deal