Xenova Group plc Sale of Farnham Research Facility to Bioventix
Tuesday January 6, 2:00 am ET
SLOUGH, England, Jan. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Xenova Group plc (Nasdaq: XNVA, London Stock Exchange, XEN) today announced that it has sold certain premises at its Farnham research facility together with related assets to Bioventix Limited ("Bioventix"). The sale assets constitute part of the business acquired by the Group upon the acquisition of KS Biomedix Holdings plc. The consideration for the sale assets was #0.8m paid in cash.
The sale includes certain rights to intellectual property relating to super high-affinity antibodies that are not being developed by Xenova, and provides for the continuation of work by Bioventix on novel three-part proteins ("trimers") being developed under an option agreement with Isis Innovations Ltd. Xenova has retained an option to develop any promising therapeutic candidates arising from this work. In addition, a team of 7 research scientists is transferring with the business to Bioventix.
The sale is in line with Xenova's declared strategy following the acquisition of KS Biomedix Holdings plc on 12 September 2003, of focusing on its clinical development portfolio and achieving cost savings through the disposal of non-core business activities and facilities.
Commenting on the disposal, David Oxlade, Chief Executive of Xenova, said, "We are pleased to announce continuing progress in achieving the cost savings expected at the time of the acquisition of KS Biomedix Holdings plc and to realize value from non-core assets for our shareholders. The sale to Bioventix, which is being run by Peter Harrison formerly of KS Biomedix, also provides Xenova an option to in-license certain therapeutic candidates."
Notes to Editors
Xenova Group plc's product pipeline focuses principally on the therapeutic areas of cancer and immune system disorders. Xenova has a broad pipeline of programs in clinical development. The Group has a well-established track record in the identification, development and partnering of innovative products and technologies and has partnerships with significant pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies including Celltech, Genentech, Lilly, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Nycomed, Pfizer and QLT.
Bioventix Ltd is a company that was formed in order to acquire certain premises at Xenova's Farnham research facility together with related assets and aims to develop and commercialize antibodies and antibody fragments and derivatives initially derived from sheep as diagnostic and therapeutic products. As a result, the Company will sell unlabelled sheep antibodies to T3 for diagnostic use and rights to develop new diagnostic and therapeutic products to other targets. (These rights exclude directly and indirectly labeled diagnostic products to carcino-embryonic antigen (CEA) and directly labeled therapeutic products to CEA.). Bioventix will also develop novel trimeric antibody entities for use in targeting solid tumors.
For further information about Xenova and its products please visit the Xenova website at www.xenova.co.uk. |
