Xoma Royalty, which has recently built a businessout of acquiring struggling biotechnology companies, has secured its latest target.In announcement late Monday, Xomasaid it has agreed to pay about $4.29 per share to acquire Generation Bio, a gene therapy developer thats currently worth less than its cash holdings.The per-share acquisition price is lower than Generations $5.39 closing price on Monday. But Generations shareholders will also receive a so-called contingent value right making them eligible to receive additional payments. Among those possible payouts are a share of any cash on hand at closing, if that total exceeds $29 million; savings on a Generation office lease; a piece of future milestones from a licensing deal with Moderna; and the proceeds, if any, should Xoma sell a delivery technology Generation had been working on.Generations board of directors unanimously approved the deal.Generation raised $200 million in an initial public offering in 2020, riding a boom in new stock offerings that lifted many preclinical drug companies and gene and cell therapy developers, specifically onto Wall Street. The company went public in the hopes of advancing a type of next-generation gene therapy technology that relied on lipid nanoparticles, rather than engineered viruses, to deliver their genetic cargo.But Generation has retrenched several times since.Shares plummeted after disappointing preclinical study resultsdelayed its development timelines in 2021. Though it formed a partnership with Modernaa couple years later, it also laid off 40% of its staff and streamlined researchamid a strategic shift.In August, Generation touted data suggesting its technology could help deliver RNA medicines into T cells. But at the time, it also slashed 90% of its workforceand began a strategic review, citing the early nature of the technology and likely long road ahead. Its longtime CEO switched to board chair shortly thereafter.Generation, then, fit the profile of the type of zombie biotech Xomahas recently begun acquiring and shutting down. Since 2024, Xoma has stepped in with bids for companies such as Turnstone Biologics,Mural Oncology, HilleVax and Lava Therapeutics.In an interview earlier this year,XomaCEO Owen Hughes described this strategy as an opportunity for struggling companies to do the right thing by shareholders and return invested capital.This structure was attractive given the circumstances, wrote Jefferies analyst Farzin Haque, in a note to clients. While Generation has a diverse set of assets with strong intellectual property protection, all of its programs will require substantial work to obtain proof-of-concept in humans and get any value from an acquirer, he wrote.Xoma is also harnessing an increasingly popular acquisition tool contingent value rights to help bump up the potential total worth of its deals. '