Celsion Corporation Announces Acquisition Of EGEN

EGEN, a biopharmaceutical company based out of Huntsville, Alabama, has announced that it is being acquired by the Celsion Corporation for $14 million. Celsion is an oncology drug development firm, while EGEN focuses primarily on the development of therapeutic nucleic acids for cancer and other rare diseases. This move is expected to help boost Celsion’s research and development efforts.

Khursheed Anwer, the president and chief scientific officer of EGEN, elaborates upon the new technologies that his company has developed which overcome the traditional barriers of nucleic acid-based therapies. “By joining with Celsion now, we add not only the operational and managerial expertise to accelerate development of these assets and technologies, but gain access to the added financial resources of an established public company,” he told AL.com.

In a company press release, Celsion noted that it would be acquiring all of EGEN’s assets, including the company’s Phase Ib DNA-based immunotherapy product candidate EGEN-001, along with the rest of the company’s therapeutic platform technologies TheraPlas, TheraSilence, and RAST. Under the terms of the deal, EGEN will receive $14 million in an upfront payment, but the deal could be for as much as $30.4 million when including future milestones  based on clinical developments. The acquisition is expected  to be fully completed within the month.

Michael H. Tardugno, the president and CEO of Celsion, also commented on the deal. “As a combined Company, Celsion-EGEN will be focused on the leading-edge of cancer treatment, with assets in directed chemotherapies, immunotherapies and DNA- or RNA-based therapies. With clinical programs in Phases III, II and I, and an extensive pipeline of pre-clinical product candidates, Celsion-EGEN will be well positioned to deliver innovative new therapies to address areas of pressing unmet medical need in oncology,” he said.