Betibeglogene autotemcel

bluebird has been under financial pressure for several years. Credit: SOPA Images via Getty Images. Bluebird bio (bluebird) has reaffirmed its support for a proposed acquisition by Carlyle and SK Capital after rival bidder Ayrmid failed to deliver a binding offer or secure financing by the extended deadline. The announcement marks the second time Ayrmid has initiated discussions with bluebird without producing a fully financed proposal. Bluebird said it had engaged with Ayrmid for three weeks following the private equity firm’s unsolicited bid in March, including extending the original deadline to allow more time for due diligence and deal structuring. However, Ayrmid did not submit a definitive proposal by the agreed-upon 15 April cut-off date and has yet to secure the necessary capital to proceed. As a result, bluebird’s board of directors is reiterating its unanimous support for the acquisition agreement with Carlyle and SK Capital, which was first announced in February 2025. The board is urging shareholders to tender their shares by the updated deadline of 2 May, extending the previous expiration date of 18 April. bluebird’s board chairman Mark Vachon said: “Ayrmid’s proposal remains highly conditional. bluebird has engaged with Ayrmid on two separate occasions—neither of which has resulted in a binding or fully-financed offer. The board unanimously reaffirms its support of the previously announced agreement with Carlyle and SK Capital in the strongest possible terms.” Bluebird has been under significant financial pressure for several years. The company currently faces the risk of defaulting on a $175m loan from Hercules Capital, secured in 2024 to support ongoing operations. Without a new capital injection, the board said, the company’s liquidity position remains precarious. Carlyle and SK Capital’s proposal offers $3 per share in cash, along with a potential additional payment of $6.84 per share if certain clinical and commercial milestones are met. Ayrmid‘s offer, disclosed last month, proposed $4.50 per share upfront and the same milestone-based payout structure. However, bluebird confirmed that Ayrmid has not demonstrated access to committed funding. bluebird noted that Ayrmid is continuing to seek financing and may provide further updates in the coming days. bluebird’s financial position has deteriorated over time, despite achieving several key regulatory milestones. The company currently markets three US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)- approved gene therapies – Zynteglo (betibeglogene autotemcel) for transfusion-dependent beta-thalassemia, Skysona (elivaldogene autotemcel) for cerebral adrenoleukodystrophy, and Lyfgenia (lovotibeglogene autotemcel) for sickle cell disease – but has struggled with slow uptake, high costs, and reimbursement hurdles. In 2023, the company suffered a major setback when the FDA denied a priority review voucher (PRV) for Lyfgenia. Bluebird had already arranged to sell the voucher to Novartis for $103m, but the agency ruled that the therapy’s active ingredient had previously been used in Zynteglo, for which the company had already received a PRV in 2022. The loss of the expected funds deepened bluebird’s financial strain. To fill the gap, bluebird pursued emergency financing through a $150m public stock offering underwritten by Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, as well as up to $100m in receivables financing from Alterna Capital Solutions. The company has also undergone repeated cost-cutting efforts, including workforce reductions of 30% in 2022 and an additional 25% last year. Despite these efforts, bluebird’s therapies continue to face stiff competition. Lyfgenia is priced at $3.1m per patient, while a competing treatment, Casgevy (exagamglogene autotemcel) from Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics, is listed at $2.2m. Both therapies were approved on the same day in December 2023 to treat sickle cell disease. Going public in 2013, bluebird has seen its stock decline sharply in recent years. Following the 16 April update, shares closed down by 7%. Cell & Gene Therapy coverage on Pharmaceutical Technology is supported by Cytiva . Editorial content is independently produced and follows the highest standards of journalistic integrity. Topic sponsors are not involved in the creation of editorial content. Free Whitepaper Optimise your cell therapy process: a guide to cell thawing Typically carried out at the point of care, errors in cell therapy thawing could compromise treatment efficacy, leading to significant patient impact as well as high costs and a compromised reputation for the product’s developer. This guide addresses how cell thawing has historically developed into the new techniques used today, along with the physical and biological implications of key metrics and components such as warming rate and ice structure. Also included are reviews of key studies from scientific literature and a consideration of the interactions between cooling and warming rates, as applicable to cell and gene therapies. Thank you. You will receive an email shortly. Please check your inbox to download the Whitepaper. By Cytiva Thematic You have a right to withdraw your consent at any time, by clicking here . We may still continue to send you service-related and other non-promotional communications. For more information relating to our privacy practices, we invite you to review our privacy policy .

iStock, Andrii Yalanskyi Despite making an unsolicited bid for gene therapy maker bluebird bio, Ayrmid failed to deliver a binding offer after weeks of due diligence. Bluebird’s board recommended that it go with Carlyle and SK Capital Partner’s original offer to take the company private for $30 million. Despite weeks of communication between the two companies, bluebird bio announced Wednesday that Ayrmid has not submitted a binding proposal to buy the company, despite an unsolicited offer in late March . Bluebird had already entered into a purchase agreement with the investment firms Carlyle and SK Capital Partners in February for $3 per share, or $30 million total. Ayrmid, an Ireland-based investment firm, offered $4.50 per share, a 50% premium on Carlyle and SK Capital’s offer, with an additional $6.84 per share payment based on sales milestones. “Bluebird has engaged with Ayrmid on two separate occasions—neither of which has resulted in a binding or fully-financed offer,” bluebird’s Chairman Mark Vachon said in a statement. Vachon also noted that without an infusion of capital in some form or another, bluebird was at risk of defaulting on its loans. Bluebird’s board, therefore, reiterated support for the initial Carlyle and SK Capital deal. That original deal was expected to close in the first half of 2025, before Ayrmid’s imposition, and would take bluebird private. According to bluebird’s statement, Ayrmid and bluebird took part in a two-week due diligence period after the unsolicited offer, and bluebird even extended the period by four days at Ayrmid’s request, after which Ayrmid failed to submit a binding offer and admitted that it didn’t have the necessary financing to go through with the purchase. Bluebird once commanded a far mightier valuation, peaking at just shy of $12.5 billion in 2018. While the company has secured a series of FDA approvals—Lyfgenia for sickle cell disease, Zynteglo for beta-thalassemia and Skysona for cerebral adrenoleukodystrophy—the therapies have struggled on the market with slow uptake. With its cash runway ending in the first quarter of 2025, analysts began to worry that bluebird would not make it to a revenue break-even point later this year. When the Carlyle and SK Capital deal was initially announced, bluebird saw the purchase as “the only viable solution to generate value for stockholders.”