Agilent To Enter Licensing Pacts For Drug Research Products
Wednesday October 9, 5:09 pm ET
By Bill Richards
For DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
SEATTLE -(Dow Jones)- Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A - News) plans to announce new licensing agreements with Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NasdaqNM:MLNM - News) and Large Scale Biology Corp. (NasdaqNM:LSBC - News) , expanding its line of products for developing protein- based drug research.
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The agreements are expected to be announced this week, Taia Ergueta, director of business development for Agilent's Life Sciences and Chemical Analysis unit, told Dow Jones Newswires.
"It's the beginning of the third stage of our proteomics program," Ergueta said.
In the first phase last year, Agilent developed products for preparation of protein samples.
"Then, in the last nine months, we have brought our mass spectrometer hardware and software systems into the program," she said.
The latest licensing agreements expand the program to include software and biochemistry, Ergueta said. Agilent plans to market the software as part of its Synapsis Informatics Workbench software package.
Agilent will pay Millennium and Large Scale Biology Corp. an undisclosed amount for the licenses. No date has been set for when the new software will be included in Agilent's Synapsis package, she said.
More than 30% of Agilent's Life Science revenue is generated from recurring sales of products used in its existing software and hardware programs, Ergueta said. Products developed from the new licenses will add value to those existing systems and tend to have higher margins, she said.
Under an agreement with Millennium, Agilent, Palo Alto, Calif., will develop and sell software based on Millennium's SpectrumMill software, which Millennium has been using internally for protein-based drug research. The software allows researchers to analyze large volumes of data compiled using mass spectrum analysis.
The agreement also gives Millennium, Boston, early access to products being developed as part of Agilent's proteomics research.
The licensing agreement with Large Scale Biology will permit Agilent to develop new methods of spotting disease targets for new drugs, based on Large Scale Biology's proteomics research into the separation of low-abundance proteins from serum samples, such as blood. The Large Scale Biology license will cover the development of research products, while the Millennium license will cover both research products as well as additional products, Ergueta said.
For the nine months ended July 31, Agilent posted a loss of $796 million, or $ 1.71 a share, on revenue of $4.27 billion. The company's stock closed Wednesday at $10.90, down 10.9%. |
