Japan’s Ajinomoto Acquires Contract Drug Maker Althea Technologies

[Updated 3/7/13 7:34 am to include terms, other details. See below.] Ajinomoto, a Japanese food, pharmaceuticals, and specialty chemicals manufacturer, is acquiring San Diego-based Althea Technologies, a contract manufacturer of drugs, proteins, and injectable products that was founded in 1998. In a statement, Ajinomoto valued the deal, expected to close next month, at about $175 million.

Althea develops and makes biopharmaceuticals and provides related products and services to support biopharmaceutical customers from preclinical development through commercial production. The contract manufacturer’s capabilities include aseptic filling of syringes and protein delivery technology for recombinant protein and injectable products.

Ajinomoto, which generated global sales of $15.1 billion in fiscal 2011, plans to continue serving Althea’s customers, which include Pfizer licensee Profectus BioSciences. Althea has about 220 employees, and Ajinomoto plans to add biotech jobs in San Diego as part of its expansion, Althea CEO Rick Hancock told Brad Fikes of U-T San Diego. By 2020, Ajinomoto says the business should be generating annual revenue of 30 billion yen, or $320 million.

Telegraph Hill Partners, the specialized private equity firm based in San Francisco, was a key investor and worked closely with Althea as the company opened a new 30,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in 2009 and built its management team. Telegraph Hill’s founding chairman and managing partner, J. Matthew Mackowski, and partner Deval Lashkari joined Althea’s board in 2006. Althea disclosed a $23 million investment by Telegraph Hill in 2007. Althea also raised $17 million in venture debt through Hercules Technology Growth Capital in 2010.

In 2008, Althea said it was spinning out part a part of its business that was focused on gene expression analysis in 2008, forming AltheaDx to identify biomarkers and to develop specialized genetic testing technologies for use as companion diagnostics to guide cancer treatments. Eric J. Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute and chief academic officer of Scripps Health, sits on the new company’s scientific advisory board.

Althea Technologies co-founder Francois Ferré now serves as the CEO of AltheaDx. Magda Marquet, who also co-founded Althea Technologies, sits on the board at AltheaDx, along with Telegraph Hill’s Mackowski and Lashkari.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.