German pharmaceutical giant Bayer is buying North Carolina-based gene therapy company Asklepios BioPharmaceutical, the companies announced Monday morning.
The deal values AskBio, founded by a UNC professor in 2001, at up to $4 billion.
The sale includes a $2 billion up front payment, with the rest of the money dependent on AskBio reaching certain milestones.
Bayer added that AskBio will operate independently and "on an arms-length basis."
AskBio has been one of the most valuable companies in the Triangle's growing gene therapy sector. The company had raised more than $230 million from investors in recent years.
Though still experimental, gene therapy is one of the most promising forms of treatment in recent years for diseases like cancer and some inherited disorders.
The treatment uses genes to treat diseases in multiple ways, like replacing a mutated gene that causes a disease with a healthy one, knocking out mutated genes or adding a new gene to counteract a disease.
AskBio, for instance, has a stable of treatments for neuromuscular, central nervous system, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases in clinical testing.
Bayer will now own the rights to AskBio's gene therapy platform.
"With this acquisition, Bayer significantly advances the establishment of a cell and gene therapy platform that can be at the forefront of breakthrough science, contributing to preventing or even curing diseases caused by gene defects and further driving company growth in the future," Werner Baumann, chairman of the board of management of Bayer, said in a statement.
AskBio's cofounder, Jude Samulski, the director of UNC's 20-year-old Gene Therapy Center, has been a big reason the Triangle has made strides in this burgeoning technology.
Most roads related to gene therapy in the Triangle lead back to Samulski, who was originally recruited to UNC from the University of Pittsburgh with the help of a $430,000 Faculty Recruitment Grant from the N.C. Biotechnology Center in 1993, according to the center's web site.
Chapel Hill-based Bamboo Therapeutics, where Samulski was chief scientific officer, was bought by Pfizer in 2016 in a deal that was worth up to $645 million.
Sheila Mikhail, the CEO and cofounder of AskBio, said the sale to Bayer will give the company worldwide reach while maintaining an independent structure.
"Bayer and AskBio are positioned to provide accelerated development of gene therapies to treat more patients who can benefit from them," Mikhail said in a statement.
Bayer said it hopes the deal will close by the end of the year.
The acquisition gives Bayer another foothold in the Triangle. The German company once had a large presence in Research Triangle Park, but it has been downsizing for years since it bought Monsanto, The News & Observer previously reported.
The company once had more than 1,000 jobs here in the Triangle, but many of those positions shifted to St. Louis.
However, the company does have a significant financial stake in another RTP startup called Pairwise that uses CRISPR gene-editing technology to improve plants, The N&O previously reported.
