Bio­Marin plans to dish out $4.8 bil­lion to ac­quire Am­i­cus Ther­a­peu­tics and its two ap­proved rare dis­ease med­i­cines, the Cal­i­for­nia biotech said Fri­day.

By gain­ing ac­cess to Am­i­cus' meds for Pompe and Fab­ry dis­eases, CEO Alexan­der Hardy is forg­ing a key part of the fu­ture for Bio­Marin as part of a mul­ti­year turn­around. The drug­mak­er has con­duct­ed lay­offs, re­or­ga­ni­za­tions and pipeline culls over the past few years to ad­just the ship.

"When I came to Bio­Marin two years ago, I came be­cause I saw the po­ten­tial for a re­al­ly icon­ic biotech com­pa­ny and to re­al­ly con­tin­ue to strength­en our lead­er­ship po­si­tion in rare dis­eases," Hardy told End­points News.

He said it quick­ly be­came ap­par­ent that the com­pa­ny had the glob­al foot­print and man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ty "to pro­duce all dif­fer­ent types of modal­i­ties of drugs and reach pa­tients around the world."

Gala­pa­gos is flush with bil­lions in cash, but it's not mov­ing for­ward with its own pipeline. So what’s the Bel­gian biotech go­ing to do with all of that mon­ey?

The ques­tion resur­faced af­ter Gala­pa­gos said Thurs­day it's open to "all strate­gic al­ter­na­tives" for an ex­per­i­men­tal im­munol­o­gy drug that post­ed mixed re­sults at Phase 2. Those al­ter­na­tives in­clude po­ten­tial­ly find­ing a new part­ner for the TYK2 in­hibitor known as GLPG3667, and Gilead, the com­pa­ny's 25% own­er, said it's tem­porar­i­ly waiv­ing rights.

It's the lat­est move from a com­pa­ny that once had the biggest mar­ket cap in Eu­ro­pean biotech. The drug is Gala­pa­gos’ on­ly clin­i­cal as­set out­side of its cell ther­a­py busi­ness, which it is plan­ning to wind down. The un­cer­tain­ty in Gala­pagos' fu­ture is ev­i­dent in its mar­ket val­ue of about $2 bil­lion — even though the com­pa­ny says it's end­ing the year with cash of about €3 bil­lion ($3.5 bil­lion).

Adi­tum Bio, the biotech com­pa­ny cre­ation firm from for­mer No­var­tis lead­ers Joe Jimenez and Mark Fish­man, has re­turned to Chi­na for an­oth­er deal.

This time, Adi­tum is form­ing