Celsion To Acquire Privately Held EGEN For $14 Mln Including Debts- Quick Facts

(RTTNews) - Oncology drug development company Celsion Corp. (CLSN) Tuesday said it has agreed to acquire the assets of privately held biopharmaceutical company EGEN, Inc., and assume certain liabilities, in a $14 million cash-and-stock deal.

Celsion's upfront payment constitutes $10.6 million of the company's common stock (or about 16.4 percent of Celsion's outstanding shares), of which $2.1 million of stock is subject to a twenty-four month holdback by Celsion for expense adjustment and certain indemnification claims, and $3.4 million in cash.

In addition, the company will pay EGEN $30.4 million on meeting certain clinical development and licensing milestones.

Celsion expects the acquisition of EGEN to provide multi-phase clinical pipeline, platform technologies for the discovery of nucleic acid-based immunotherapies and other anti-cancer DNA/RNA therapies.

EGEN's lead Phase Ib clinical candidate, EGEN-001, is an L-12 plasmid immunotherapy encased in a nanoparticle delivery system.

Further, Celsion said the acquisition complements Celsion's lead development candidate ThermoDox, a proprietary heat-activated liposomal encapsulation of doxorubicin.

Michael Tardugno, Celsion's CEO, said the transaction will form a company whose "synergy provides substantially more than its parts."

The acquisition is scheduled to close in the month of June.