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June 30, 2020 Bioscience

Melinta drops bid for Mass. antibiotics company

PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED Jennifer Sanfilippo, Melinta CEO.
By Natalie Missakian

After more than a month of pursuing a Massachusetts antibiotics maker for an M&A deal, New Haven-born Melinta Therapeutics is officially bowing out. 

Melinta said it has ended its agreement to buy Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals Inc. for up to $55 million after being outbid by Californial drugmaker LaJolla Pharmaceutical Co. last week.

Tetraphase has paid Melinta a $1.15 million termination fee for backing away from the deal. 

The proposed Melinta-Tetraphase marriage was inked June 4 and set to close by the end of September. The deal came after a month-long bidding war between Melinta and California drugmaker AcelRx, which had also struck a deal to acquire Tetraphase in March before Melinta entered the picture. 

LaJolla’s bid totalled $59 million in upfront and milestone payments. Melinta had an opportunity to submit a better offer by last Friday but declined.

Melinta has been eyeing an expansion of its drug portfolio after emerging from bankruptcy under private ownership in April. The Tetraphase deal would have given it Xerava, an antibiotic that earned FDA approval in 2018 to treat intra-abdominal infections.

Now based in New Jersey, Melinta was one of New Haven’s earliest biotech firms, co-founded by a Nobel-prize winning Yale scientist. It closed its New Haven office in 2019.

Contact Natalie Missakian at news@newhavenbiz.com.

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