Warburg Pincus Reaches Deal to Buy Biotech Firm Polyplus-Transfection

(Bloomberg) -- Warburg Pincus has reached a preliminary agreement to acquire French biotechnology company Polyplus-Transfection SA from investment firm ArchiMed SAS, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The deal values Polyplus at more than $500 million, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Warburg Pincus’s bid beat out offers from competing buyout firms, the people said.

Lyon-based ArchiMed acquired a majority stake in Polyplus in 2016. Polyplus develops delivery solutions for nucleic acids, like DNA and RNA, into cells. The method is used for investigating gene functions, virus production, protein delivery and gene editing. The company was founded in 2001 as a spinoff from the genetic chemistry laboratory at the University of Strasbourg in eastern France.

This acquisition would add to Warburg Pincus’s long list of deals in the health-care technology space. In August last year the private equity firm bought rehab therapy platform WebPT Inc. The following month, it acquired electronic health-record firm Qualifacts.

Representatives for ArchiMed, Polyplus and Warburg Pincus declined to comment.

To contact the reporters on this story: Myriam Balezou in London at mbalezou@bloomberg.net;Dinesh Nair in London at dnair5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Dinesh Nair at dnair5@bloomberg.net, David Morris (News)

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