The Burrill Report

Financial services giant Blackstone is investing $125 million in NantPharma, a pharmaceutical development and manufacturing business that is part of billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong’s NantWorks’ growing biomedical venture.

Soon-Shiong says he is concerned about an “alarming shortage” of injectable drugs for cancer sufferers and other critically ill patients. At the end of 2011, the number of shortages hitting common classes of medicines, including CNS, antibiotic, and chemotherapy drugs had more than doubled since five years earlier, according to Utah Drug Information Service.

“Our country must have absolutely reliable sources of blood plasma products. The effective treatment of autoimmune and other diseases will depend on this,” he says. “We must also enhance our capabilities to manufacture injectable and next-generation drugs in America.”

Soon-Shiong raised billions of dollars founding and then selling APP Pharmaceuticals and Abraxis Bioscience. He founded NantWorks in September 2011 with a vision of building an “integrated evidence-based, genomically informed, personalized approach” to healthcare delivery and the development of therapeutics and diagnostics.

Since then, NantPharma acquired a former Pfizer plant in Indiana—buying it for $1, according to Indiana’s Tribune Star—and has committed to investing $85.5 million to produce critical care injectable and cancer drugs there once the facility is operational. At the time of the sale, NantWorks agreed with the local redevelopment commission to employ 234 workers at the plant by the end of 2016, according to the Star.

As part of the deal, Chinh Chu and Anjan Mukherjee, Blackstone senior managing directors, and pharma business veteran Arthur Higgins from Blackstone’s dedicated healthcare group, Blackstone Healthcare Partners, will join Soon-Shiong on the NantPharma board.



July 27, 2012
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-blackstone_invests_125_million_in_nantpharma.html