START-UPS MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS
C R E D I T: KA LE ID O BI O S C I EN C ES
Kuraray snags Calgon Carbon Japan’s Kuraray has reached a deal to acquire the Pittsburgh-based activated carbon maker Calgon Carbon for $1.1 billion. The agreement brings the last large independent U.S. activated carbon maker under the wings of a diversified parent. Under the terms of the transaction, Kuraray will pay Calgon shareholders $21.50 per share in cash, a more-than-60% premium to Calgon’s stock price before the deal was announced. Activated carbon is a highly porous form of carbon used in purification and filtration. After the merger, which is expected to close at the end of December, Calgon will be a Kuraray subsidiary and will continue serving customers with filtration media, services, and equipment to water treatment customers. Calgon had net income last year of nearly $14 million on sales of $514 million. It operates 20 facilities around the world and employs 1,400 people. It will join a company that has 8,600 employees and earned $348 million on sales of $4.2 billion from a variety of materials, including activated carbon. Calgon CEO Randy Dearth says the merger will make his company part of a “much larger, stronger global company.” Dearth, who will remain after the merger, has led Calgon through both difficult and expansive times. He fended off activist investor Starboard Value in 2013 and expanded the firm with the purchase of Arkema’s activated carbon business last year. He also kept it independent while competitors Norit and Sorbent Technologies were acquired by Cabot and Albemarle, respectively. After the acquisition, Kuraray says it will reduce costs “by optimizing manufacturing facilities.” The Japanese firm also hopes to speed innovation by combining its own R&D expertise with Calgon’s.—MARC REISCH
Three new Boston biotech firms emerge Kaleido Biosciences, LifeMine Therapeutics, and Disarm Therapeutics surface from stealth mode to cut toxins in chronic kidney disease, A trio of Cambridge, Mass.-based biotech eradicate pathogens, and reduce mucus start-ups unveiled themselves last week, membrane damage in the gut caused by all boasting impressive first rounds of chemotherapy. financing. Von Maltzahn hopes that the antibiotLeading the pack was Flagship Pioneerics expertise of former Cubist employees ing-funded Kaleido Biosciences, which is designing orally available compounds to modulate the human microbiome, improve health, and treat disease. Founded in 2015, the start-up remained in stealth mode within Flagship VentureLabs until its Sept. 18 emergence with $65 million in series A and B funding, more than 60 employees, and 100some patent applications. Newly positioned at Kaleido’s helm is Mike Bonney, former CEO of antibiotics developer Cubist Pharmaceuticals, which Merck & Co. purchased for $9.5 billion in 2014. That acquisition led to an exodus of several antibiotics experts from Cubist to Kaleido, including Jared Silverman, Kaleido’s first em- Kaleido scientists are testing polysaccharides ployee and previous vice president that modulate microbiome health. of discovery biology at Cubist. will help quickly develop compounds “We’re creating a new category of that translate well from petri dish to chemistries that are the opposite of antihumans. biotics,” says Flagship Pioneering partner Also receiving sizable funding is fungal Geoff Von Maltzahn. Kaleido views the migenome mining start-up LifeMine Thercrobiome as an organ that needs healing, apeutics. A $55 million series A funding not killing, he says. round led by WuXi Healthcare Ventures During the past two-and-a-half years, launched the company with Harvard UniKaleido amassed a library of glycans versity chemical biologist Gregory Verdine (which include oligosaccharides and polyas CEO. Verdine previously cofounded and saccharides) and began testing them on served as CEO at Warp Drive Bio, which human gut microbiome assays designed to similarly trawls microbial genomes in reflect healthy and diseased human bowsearch of gene clusters that produce natuels. “Other microbiome companies focus ral products. on the bugs-as-drugs approach,” in which Launching with $30 million in series A microbes themselves provide treatment, funding from Atlas Venture, Lighthouse Von Maltzahn says. Kaleido’s goal is to Ventures, and AbbVie Ventures is neurol“drug the bugs” and improve microbial ogy-driven Disarm Therapeutics. Disarm community health. plans to design small-molecule inhibitors Kaleido’s pipeline includes compounds for several conditions, with an initial focus of a protein called SARM1, recently implicated in axon degeneration. Potential on urea cycle disorders, or “anywhere that SARM1 inhibitor applications include hyperammonemia, or too much ammonia multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral in the blood, is a problem,” Bonney says. sclerosis.—RYAN CROSS The firm is also advancing compounds SEPTEMBER 25, 2017 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN
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