Business
Ligand Spins Out and Merges Pelican Subsidiary with Primordial Genetics to Form Primrose Bio
Ligand retains all Pelican commercial royalties and will own 49.9% of Primrose Bio, Inc. as a stand-alone private company with leading technologies in
About this update from Ligand Pharmaceuticals Incorporated
[{"type":"text","content":"\nLigand retains all Pelican commercial royalties and will own 49.9% of Primrose Bio, Inc. as a stand-alone private company with leading technologies in synthetic biology\n\n\nLigand contributes $15 million in exchange for economic interest in select Primrose programs\n\n\nLigand improves cash expense outlook and raises EPS guidance\n\n\n SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--\nLigand Pharmaceuticals Incorporated (NASDAQ: LGND) (“Ligand,” the “Company” or “we”) announced that it has entered into a merger agreement, pursuant to which its subsidiary, Pelican Technology Holdings, Inc., (“Pelican”) has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Primrose Bio, Inc. (“Primrose Bio”, formerly known as Primordial Genetics, Inc.). Primrose Bio is a stand-alone private company focused on synthetic biology. As part of the transaction, Ligand retains the existing commercial royalties related to the Pelican Expression Technology® and will own 49.9% of Primrose Bio. Simultaneous with the merger, Ligand entered into a Purchase and Sale Agreement with Primrose Bio and contributed $15 million in exchange for a portion of the economic rights from two contracts previously entered into by Primordial Genetics and an economic interest in potential future revenues generated from PeliCRM197®.\n\n\nPrimrose Bio combines the Primordial Genetics’ Function Generator™ and Ligand’s Pelican Expression Technology® platform (formerly known as Pfenex Expression Technology®) to create a revolutionary way of enhancing biological productivity to enable the next generation of therapeutics. Function Generator is designed to systematically generate tens of millions of novel genes in an ultra-high-throughput fashion, to enable the discovery of enzymes and microbes with improved function. The Pelican Expression Technology is a robust and scalable production platform used in five approved medicines that is especially well-suited for large-scale protein production of complex proteins. These proprietary technologies have been leveraged to create Prima RNApols™ and PeliCRM197, two manufacturing and formulation solutions licensed to biopharma companies to develop mRNA therapeutics and conjugate vaccines, respectively.\n\n\n“The acquisition of Pfenex in 2020 was a successful and accretive deal for Ligand that continues to pay dividends. After incubating Pfenex and its Pelican Expression Techno...