Convergence is sold to firm Texas firm
Hub company in $10m deal working on cancer drugs
By Ronald Rosenberg, Globe Staff, 07/20/99
Convergence Pharmaceuticals Inc., formed four months ago by four researchers whose work includes some of the most promising recent developments in cancer treatment, was sold to Ilex Oncology Inc. for $10 million in Ilex stock yesterday.
''We were at the crossroads of raising venture capital money and looking at three companies wanting to acquire us, including Ilex,'' said Glenn Rice, chief executive of Boston-based Convergence.
Interest in Convergence, which has 12 employees, has been centered on the research of its scientific founders, Dr. Vikas Sukhatme and Raghu Kalluri, who were developing compounds to starve cancerous tumors by shutting down blood vessel growth. Both are also researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and faculty members at Harvard Medical School.
Just how cancer tumors establish a blood supply, a field known as angiogenesis, and figuring out how to shut down blood vessel growth, is a hot area of medical development.
The pioneering angiogenesis work of Dr. Judah Folkman, a cancer researcher at Children's Hospital, drew worldwide headlines 14 months ago. Folkman has licensed two promising compounds to Convergence's main competitor, EntreMed Inc. of Rockville, Md. Sukhatme, a colleague of Folkman's at Harvard Medical School, was the first researcher to validate Folkman's key findings, which had been questioned by some medical researchers last year.
Rice contends Convergence's drug candidates are more powerful and easier to make than Entremed's. The Ilex buy, he said, will enable Convergence to get its drugs into animal and human clinical trials much faster than if it had remained independent.
Ilex is getting six compounds from Convergence, according to Richard Love, Ilex's president. Love said his four-year-old firm, based in San Antonio, has nine other cancer drugs in various stages of testing.
Under the agreement, Convergence shareholders received 1 million Ilex shares, worth about $10 million based on Friday's closing price of 9 15/16. In addition, Convergence's founders, including Dr. Ralph Weichselbaum of the University of Chicago, and Dr. Donald Kufe, deputy director of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, can earn up to an additional 1 million Ilex shares if some of the proposed Convergence drugs reach certain clinical trial milestones, according to Rice and Love.
Separately, Ilex is hoping to announce this summer a major pharmaceutical partner to market and distribute a promising leukemia-fighting drug called Campath. That drug aimed at an estimated 60,000 adult Americans was developed by LeukoSite Inc. of Cambridge and tested by Ilex under a joint venture announced in May 1997. Love said Ilex will file for US Food and Drug Administration approval of Campath later this year.
Ilex shares closed at 9 29/32, down 1/32, on the Nasdaq exchange.
This story ran on page D01 of the Boston Globe on 07/20/99. |
