India’s leading healthcare companies and global healthcare provider, Zydus Cadila, has acquired Italy-based Etna Biotech, the wholly-owned subsidiary of the Dutch biopharma company, Crucell NV, which focuses on research and development of vaccines.

With its focus on biologicals, Crucell entered the vaccines space with the acquisition of Berna Biotech - a globally renowned, specialized vaccine company - whose dedicated research and development wing was Etna.

In a release to the Bombay Stock Exchange, Zydus Cadilla said that the deal marks its first acquisition in the research space and offers it a research platform for developing new vaccines and technology. However, the company refrained from specifying the amount it paid for the acquisition.

The chairman and managing director of Zydus Cadilla, Pankaj R Patel, said: “With this acquisition, we will be at the forefront of innovation for vaccine research and development.”

Etna Biotech presently has several technologies and vaccines at different development stages in its pipeline. The most important among those are the programs for developing vaccines against Hepatitis using the Virosome vaccine technology platform, and against Malaria and HPV using the Measles technology platform.