Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon is set to acquire Takeda Pharmaceutical’s Fibrin Sealant Patch for $400 million. The deal is set to close in the second half of 2019.

The TachoSil is a surgical patch designed to achieve safe fast and reliable bleeding control. Upon close, about 80 employees will transition to Ethicon. Takeda said net sales for TachoSil were about $155 million for the 2018 fiscal year.

Terms for the deal call for Ethicon to acquire the assets and licenses that support the manufacturing, licensing and commercialization of TachoSil, while Takeda maintains ownership of the manufacturing facility in Linz, Austria. Takeda has entered into a long-term manufacturing services agreement, under which it will continue to manufacture TachoSil products and supply them to Ethicon.

Takeda is also divesting Xiidra (lifitegrast ophthalmic solution) to Novartis for $3.4 billion upfront in cash and up to an additional $1.9 billion in potential milestone payments. The reason for both deals is to help Takeda reduce debt it incurred from borrowing $30 billion to finance its acquisition of Dublin-based Shire.

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“These initial divestitures represent important steps in advancing the growth strategy Takeda outlined following our transformational acquisition of Shire earlier this year,” Christophe Weber, president and CEO of Takeda, said in a release. “We are working to strategically simplify and optimize our portfolio, while also rapidly deleveraging and continuing to invest in our growth drivers as a global, values-based, R&D-driven biopharmaceutical leader.”

Although Johnson & Johnson has been making significant divestitures in medtech, the company has quietly building up its Ethicon unit through acquring businesses and product lines. 

In addition to the TachoSil deal, the New Brunswick, NJ-based Johnson & Johnson put up $3.4 billion in February to acquire Auris Health for Ethicon with the potential for additional contingent payments of up to $2.35 billion.

Auris Health develops robotic technologies that have been focused on lung cancer. The firm has the Monarch Platform, an FDA cleared system currently used in bronchoscopic diagnostic and therapeutic procedures.