GC Corp., the holding company for GC Group in South Korea with companies across the health care sector, announced April 19 it signed a definitive agreement to acquire 100% of the shares of BioCentriq Inc., based in Newark.
Financial terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed.
BioCentriq was founded in 2019 as a New Jersey Innovation Institute company and is a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) that designs and develops scalable cell and gene technologies. According to GC, the acquisition broadens its companies’ capabilities in scaling CDMO platforms.
In January, BioCentriq announced it completed construction on the 9,000-square-foot clinical manufacturing site in South Brunswick. In March 2021, the company partnered with Kytopen, a Cambridge-based startup spun out of MIT to “advance the production and manufacturing of cell and gene therapies,” said Haro Hartounian, founder, senior vice president and general manager of BioCentriq.
According to GC’s announcement, BioCentriq “is well-positioned in the potentially $40 billion addressable market, end-to-end CDMO for cell and gene therapy process development and clinical manufacturing with cGMP-grade clinical manufacturing facility across locations in New Jersey.”
Yong-Jun Huh, president of GC, added, “BioCentriq’s unique expertise in the rapidly growing cell and gene therapy CDMO will be a transformative addition to our business that we believe will accelerate our growth, with additional expansion projects underway adjacent to current BioCentriq facilities. We are thrilled to team up with BioCentriq’s incredibly talented team.”
BioCentriq will operate similar to other GC companies, wherein each company maintains its individual culture and identity while sharing best practices, GC stated.
Raymond James is acting as GC’s advisor on the transaction.
