By Adria Calatayud

Bayer said it agreed to buy Perfuse Therapeutics for up to $2.45 billion, snapping up an eye-drug specialist that is developing a potential glaucoma treatment in the company's biggest deal in years.

The German pharmaceutical-and-agricultural group said Wednesday that the acquisition of San Francisco-based Perfuse would complement its drug pipeline and leverage its ophthalmology footprint. Eye drug Eylea was the top-selling product at Bayer's pharma business last year, but the medicine is now facing pricing pressures after it went off patent.

Perfuse's lead drug candidate is an experimental treatment for glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy currently being tested in mid-stage clinical trials, Bayer said. It has the potential to become one of the first disease-modifying treatments for both conditions, the company added.

Bayer said it would pay $300 million upfront, with the rest of the price subject to hitting development, regulatory, and commercial targets.

Perfuse is Bayer's biggest acquisition since its takeover of AskBio for up to $4 billion in 2020, a company spokeswoman said.

Big pharma companies often buy smaller drugmakers to complement the work of their own labs, fill their pipelines and make up for medicines losing patent protection. But Bayer's efforts to bring down debt meant it largely sat out recent industry dealmaking even as its biggest medicines--heart drug Xarelto and Eylea--went off patent.

Bayer's $63 billion acquisition of Monsanto in 2018 saddled it with debt and litigation and the group has focused on cutting costs and streamlining operations in recent years.

After the AskBio acquisition, Bayer bought Vividion Therapeutics for up to $2 billion and KaNDy Therapeutics for up to $875 million, but its dealmaking activity most recently centered on early-stage drug candidates that had yet to be tested in humans.

Bayer's pharma head, Stefan Oelrich, last month said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that the company was in negotiations for a number of deals.

Write to Adria Calatayud at adria.calatayud@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 06, 2026 06:36 ET (10:36 GMT)

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