Princeton, NJ and New York, NY 7/11/17—Alternative investment firm EQT has signed an agreement to acquire Certara for $850 million. Arsenal Capital Partners, the currently owner of Certara, will retain a minority stake. Based in New Jersey, with 500 employees, Certara provides model-informed drug development technology and services, as well as regulatory writing and submission services. The company has 1,200 commercial customers. “We are excited to support the development of Certara through continued investment in next generation technology, further international expansion and complementary acquisitions,” stated Eric Liu, partner at EQT Partners, and investment advisor to the EQT VII fund. Certara CEO Edmundo Muniz, MD, PhD, will remain with the company.

 Certara’s bioinformatics offerings for pre-clinical through patient care include SimCyp PBPK modeling and simulation platforms, Phoenix modeling and simulation software, and the D360 informatics platform for integrated data access and analysis. New investments include Quantitative Systems Pharmacology (QSP) for drug development, which integrates data with modeling to study drug pathways and targets. The acquisition comes at a time when pharmaceutical companies are adopting more sophisticated computational tools in an effort to develop drugs faster and cheaper (see Industry Watch).