Sigmoid Pharma Announces Acquisition of Freund Pharmatec Ltd.

DUBLIN, Ireland, Feb. 04, 2016 -- SIGMOID PHARMA LIMITED, a privately-owned, specialty pharmaceutical company developing innovative therapeutics for gastrointestinal and immunological diseases using its proprietary SmPill® solid oral delivery system, announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Freund Pharmatec Ltd.  

Freund Pharmatec, a wholly-owned Irish subsidiary of Freund Corporation, is a specialist drug delivery technology company focused on proprietary mini-encapsulation and layering technologies. 

Through this acquisition, Sigmoid will acquire 100% ownership of the Freund Pharmatec entity and assets, including a state of the art GMP pharmaceutical manufacturing facility and research laboratories.  The highly skilled team of employees of Freund Pharmatec will enhance and expand Sigmoid’s team.  Sigmoid will benefit from the expanded manufacturing capacity that the existing Freund Spherex® and Granulex® technologies provide as well as various intellectual property assets. This facility is located in the IDA business park in Tullamore, Ireland. Financial terms of the transaction have not been disclosed. Philip Lee and KPMG acted for Sigmoid.

Freund Pharmatec will continue ongoing customer-funded research and development programs under Sigmoid management, and will support manufacturing for Sigmoid’s clinical development pipeline, including its late stage CyCol® program, which is in development for ulcerative colitis. Sigmoid will also explore opportunities to build on existing Freund Pharmatec and Sigmoid customer-funded drug delivery research projects and related licensing businesses, where applicable.

“We are very pleased to complete the acquisition of the Freund Pharmatec entity,” said Dr. Ivan Coulter, CEO and Founder Sigmoid Pharma.  “Sigmoid and Freund have had a long-standing relationship with a shared focus on utilizing seamless minicapsule technology. This acquisition comes at an exciting time in Sigmoid’s development and will enable us to advance our lead programs through late stage clinical development and expedite our goal of becoming a global leader in the development of oral, effective and safe gastrointestinal disease therapeutics.”

Mr. Iwao Fusejima, President and CEO of Freund, said “We are very much excited to provide our state of the art pharmaceutical development technology and talents to Sigmoid by transferring Freund Pharmatec Limited in the area of advanced therapeutic solution.”

About Sigmoid Pharma
Sigmoid Pharma is a specialty pharmaceutical company developing innovative therapeutics for gastrointestinal and immunological diseases. The Company’s Single-Multiple Pill (SmPill®) technology is a versatile delivery system for optimising the formulation of active therapeutic agents and allowing targeted release at the site of disease. Sigmoid’s lead program is CyCol®, a colon-targeted, formulation of cyclosporine that permits local, topical exposure of a powerful immunosuppressant whilst minimizing systemic blood levels, thus offering the potential for an efficacious and safe oral treatment of moderate-severe ulcerative colitis (UC). Another pipeline product is has received US FDA Orphan Designation for Graft-versus-Host Disease. For additional information please visit: http://www.sigmoidpharma.com

About Freund Corporation
Since its founding in 1964 in Japan, Freund Corporation has led the world by creating revolutionary new technologies in the realm of processes used to form powder into pellets and coatings, and developed film coating applications for tablets used in the pharmaceutical industry. In addition, as the leading company in the industry Freund has successfully developed “automated film coating equipment” and “film coating liquids,” and created a business model where both pharmaceutical product manufacturing equipment, pharmaceutical excipients and other chemical products (hardware) and pharmaceutical formulation technologies (software) are supplied to customers (What Freund calls their “Ink and Pen” business model offering both software and hardware) since the time of their founding. For additional information please visit http://www.freund.co.jp.

For further information contact:
Leo Toole
Chief Financial Officer
Sigmoid Pharma Ltd, 
Blocks 9/10 Nexus UCD, Belfield Office Park,
Beech Hill Road, Dublin 4, D04 V2N9, Ireland. 
Phone +353 (0) 1 700 7452 
E-mail: [email protected]