- Bain Capital Life Sciences joins investor syndicate alongside Vivo Capital
- Partnership to support build out of state-of-the art commercial-scale spray drying, particle engineering and finished dose manufacturing facility in Bend, Oregon
Serán Bioscience (Serán or the Company), a leading contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) providing a comprehensive suite of development, analytical and manufacturing services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, today announced a strategic growth transaction of more than $200 million. Bain Capital Life Sciences (Bain Capital) led the transaction, while existing investor Vivo Capital remains a key shareholder in the company. The partnership will support Serán’s continued growth with the build out of a new commercial-scale manufacturing facility that will enable the company to provide integrated capabilities across multiple drug delivery and final dose formats providing enabling and accelerated solutions for clients from early development to commercial supply.
The new facility will be completed in 2026 and will support oral, pulmonary and nasal delivery modalities with commercial-scale particle engineering solutions, including spray drying, hot melt extrusion, nano-milling and fluid-bed manufacturing, as well as comprehensive finished dose capabilities including granulation, tableting, coating, encapsulation, powder filling, including for modified release products. An adjacent facility, already under construction, will enable extensive packaging, labeling, serialization and distribution capabilities.
“This transaction is a significant milestone in Serán’s evolution, which will enable us to rapidly scale our clinical manufacturing capability to support launches of new medicines, as well as serve new clients seeking state-of-the-art commercial capacity,” said Dan Smithey, co-founder and CEO of Serán. “We are proud to have the additional support and resources of a preeminent life sciences investor in Bain Capital who shares our vision for expanding Serán’s science-based drug development capabilities to enable commercial manufacturing of complex medicines.”
“We are impressed with Serán’s differentiated expertise and capabilities in drug development and clinical manufacturing. We believe the Company is well-positioned to benefit from long-term secular tailwinds given the importance of drug delivery technology to help address increasing challenges facing next generation oral drugs,” said Will Cozean, a managing director at Bain Capital. “Dan and his talented team have an exceptional track record of growing technology driven CDMO businesses in the solubility solution space. We look forward to an impactful partnership and to leveraging our experience and resources to build and scale Serán into a true end-to-end provider of manufacturing services for complex drug products.”
Gaurav Aggarwal, a managing partner at Vivo Capital, said: “We have been impressed by the accomplishments Dan and the team at Serán have achieved during our partnership thus far, and we are excited to partner with both Serán and Bain as the company advances in its next stage of development to expand into commercial-scale projects to serve pharma innovators in advancing their products to markets and patients worldwide.”
Serán has over 200 team members, of which more than 150 are scientists and engineers and will hire as many as 150 additional employees as the build out progresses, resulting in the creation of a nearly 200,0000 square feet campus in Bend, Oregon.
About Serán Bioscience:
Serán is a leading contract development and manufacturing organization providing a comprehensive suite of development, analytical and clinical manufacturing services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Serán utilizes a foundation of physics, chemistry, materials science and advanced engineering to design robust formulations and engineered solutions. The Company’s personnel have decades of experience in process engineering and scale-up activities, including product launches and commercial manufacturing. Serán’s experience and expertise covers a wide range of pharmaceutical formulation and manufacturing concepts, including spray drying, melt extrusion, fluid bed processing, granulation, solid dosage forms and many other enabling approaches.
About Bain Life Sciences:
Bain Capital Life Sciences was founded in 2016 and builds on Bain Capital’s forty-year history of healthcare and life sciences investing across private equity, public equity, credit, venture capital and real estate. Bain Capital Life Sciences invests in biopharmaceutical, medical device, diagnostic and life science tool companies across the globe, with a focus on companies that drive medical innovation to improve the lives of patients with unmet medical needs. The Bain Capital Life Sciences team has organically grown to more than 20 investment professionals with extensive public and private investing expertise, operating and consulting experience and colleagues who bring deep scientific and medical insights. The team’s differentiated skillset enables Bain Capital Life Sciences to invest scale capital and provide value-added strategic support to clinical and commercial-stage companies around critical phases of value creation.
About Vivo Capital
Founded in 1996, Vivo Capital is a leading global healthcare investment firm with a diverse, multi-strategy investment platform covering venture capital, growth equity, buyout and public equities. The Firm has approximately $5.8 billion in assets under management and has invested in over 400 public and private companies worldwide. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Vivo invests broadly in healthcare across all fund strategies, including biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, life science equipment and tools and healthcare services.
