Viatris agrees to buy Pacira, which makes slow-release versions of two old drugs

In Short. Viatris will pay about $1.65 billion for two old generic drugs in Pacira's slow-release forms. In one trial the longer-acting numbing drug lowered pain mainly in the first two days after surgery.

FOR DECADES surgeons have numbed wounds with bupivacaine. It is a local anesthetic, a drug that stops nerves near the injection from sending signals, and its label notes that pain is the first sensation to go. Bupivacaine has long been sold as a generic, and a single plain injection does not last long. That matters because doctors try to give fewer opioids after surgery, given the risk of addiction, and long-acting local anesthetics are one of the main alternatives.

Pacira BioSciences, a company based in Brisbane, California, sells a version that lasts longer. Its product, Exparel, holds bupivacaine in a multivesicular liposome, a tiny fat particle with many small inner chambers that let the drug out slowly. According to the FDA label, bupivacaine was found in patients' blood for 96 hours after Exparel was injected into a wound, and numbness or weakness can last up to five days.

Pacira's second product applies the same idea to a steroid, in this case a corticosteroid, a drug that calms inflammation by blocking the chemical signals the body uses to start it. Zilretta holds triamcinolone, an old steroid often injected into knees with osteoarthritis, in PLGA microspheres, tiny beads of a degradable polymer that the body breaks down over time. The companies say the main trial behind its approval in 2017 showed it reduced knee pain for 12 weeks.

In a randomized trial published in Anesthesiology in 2024, Timmy Chan and colleagues at Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong gave 80 patients having a broken wrist repaired either a plain bupivacaine nerve block or the same block with Exparel added. Over the first 48 hours, pain at rest averaged 0.6 on a scale of 0 to 10 in the Exparel group and 1.4 in the plain group, and pain on days two to four did not differ significantly. The two groups also took similar amounts of oxycodone, an opioid, for pain that broke through, and the authors described the gap in pain at rest on the first day as small. The companies' own announcement says Exparel can lower opioid use, and adds that the clinical benefit of that reduction "was not demonstrated."

On Thursday Viatris, a large maker of generic and branded medicines based in Pittsburgh, agreed to buy Pacira for $36.50 a share in cash, about $1.65 billion. Frank Lee, Pacira's chief executive, said its products have reached nearly 20 million patients. Scott Smith, Viatris's chief executive, said the two drugs fit with the company's own fast-acting version of meloxicam, a painkiller that BioPharma Dive reports has an FDA decision date of December 27.

The deal closes in steps set out in the merger agreement Pacira filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. A Viatris subsidiary must launch a tender offer, an offer to buy shares directly from Pacira's shareholders, within 15 business days of signing. It needs more than half of the shares, and the U.S. antitrust waiting period, the time federal regulators get to review a merger, has to expire. The subsidiary would then merge with Pacira without a shareholder vote. Both companies' boards approved the deal unanimously, and Pacira would owe Viatris $62 million if it accepted a better offer instead.

What Viatris is buying is protected by patents on how the two drugs are packaged and made, since the drugs themselves are long out of patent. In April 2025 Pacira settled patent suits with Fresenius Kabi and its partners, including Jiangsu Hengrui, and licensed Fresenius to sell limited amounts of a generic Exparel in America from a date in early 2030, with sales of an unlimited quantity allowed no earlier than 2039. Zilretta's patents expire in 2031, according to BioPharma Dive. Before any of that, the deal needs Pacira's shareholders to tender and the antitrust wait to pass, and the companies expect it to close by the end of 2026.