Halozyme diversifies in drug delivery with Surf Bio buy

Halozyme Therapeutics has expanded its portfolio of drug delivery technologies for a second time in a few months with the acquisition of Surf Bio and its subcutaneous injection platform.

The transaction, which involved an upfront payment of $300 million and another $100 million in potential milestone payments, gives Halozyme rights to the Surf Snapshot platform, which allows 'ultrahigh' concentrations of multiple biologic drug types to be delivered via standard subcutaneous autoinjectors.

It is complementary to Halozyme's Enhanze hyaluronidase technology, which has been used to make subcutaneous versions of 10 large-molecule medicines that would otherwise need to be administered intravenously.

The platform is Halozyme's primary generator of revenues, which are now expected to grow by more than a third to around $1.4 billion in 2025, including up to $870 million in royalties. Halozyme has three more partnerships in play with Takeda, Merus, and Skye Bioscience.

The Surf Bio acquisition comes shortly after Halozyme bought another company with a subcutaneous delivery technology, Elektrofi, for $750 million in cash and possible milestones of $150 million.

Elektrofi's Hypercon technology is being developed for incorporation in therapeutics being developed by Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, argenx, and Takeda, with two projects involving already-marketed, blockbuster medicines due to be in clinical testing this year. Halozyme has predicted Hypercon could generate $1 billion or more in royalties five years after it first reaches the market and help grow revenues "into the 2040s."

Both the Surf Snapshot and Hypercon platforms are designed to allow medicines to be formulated in lower-volume injections (2 ml or less) that can be self-administered, while Enhanze lends itself mainly to larger-volume medicines that are often delivered by physicians.

In a statement, Halozyme said Surf Bio's system, which uses a protective polymer excipient and a spray dry process, is being developed to enable high concentrations of up to 500 mg/mL across a wide range of therapeutics, including monoclonal antibodies and small molecules.

The leap from one to three drug delivery platforms comes as Halozyme is preparing for the loss of intellectual property protection for Enhanze, which has a core US patent due to expire in 2027.

It is locked in patent litigation with MSD over a subcutaneous version of its $30 billion-plus cancer blockbuster Keytruda (pembrolizumab), called Keytruda Qlex in the US and Keytruda SC in Europe, that uses a rival technology developed by Alteogen. Last month, a court in Munich granted a preliminary injunction that prevented MSD from launching the new product in the German market.

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