Thanks
Bioworld paints a similar picture at bioworld.com
It seems that it was the technology as such rather than the wish to avoid future license payments or the pipeline that tilted the decision into a take-over.
In the Bioworld article:
In 2001, news that Merck & Co. Inc., of Whitehouse Station, N.J., was buying Kirkland, Wash.-based Rosetta Inpharmatics Inc., a genomics tools and software business, for about $620 million in stock boosted the latter's stock 75 percent. (See BioWorld Today, May 14, 2001.)
"I'm reluctant to call it a trend, because everybody's technology platform is different," Sullivan said, and not many such deals have been seen lately. "[The Lilly/AME merger] is much more a function of a company with a terrific technology meeting up with a partner who saw the potential."
To which I would like to make the following comment: Sullivan may not see a trend extending from Rosetta over to AMEV. On the other hand there has been at least two other deals recently where BP has staked their claims in the mAb-area. There was this huge collaboration arrangement between AstraZeneca and Abgenix and earlier we also saw a somewhat smaller deal, where ImmunoGen sold their discovery&research workshop to Aventis for a period of three years. Included in the deal was also IMGN's preclinical pipeline. So if there is a trend it is that Big Pharma tries to get a better grip over mAb-based agents.
Erik |
