Medarex' share of the equity is still 60 %. In the most recent 10-K, the company writes:
In 2004, we assigned or licensed to Celldex, our then wholly-owned subsidiary, certain intellectual property related to our vaccine technology, including the rights to MDX-1307, one of our product candidates for the treatment of cancer, as well as the IND associated with this product candidate.
In October 2005, Celldex acquired all of the issued and outstanding shares of capital stock of Lorantis Limited, or Lorantis, a privately held biotechnology company based in Cambridge, U.K. and substantially all of the assets of Alteris Therapeutics, Inc., or Alteris, a privately held biotechnology company based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The purchase price for the Lorantis capital stock consisted of 6.8 million shares of Celldex Class A common stock, and the purchase price for the Alteris assets consisted of 1.2 million shares of Celldex common stock, a cash payment of $1.6 million and certain potential milestone and other payments. As a result of these transactions, our ownership percentage of Celldex was reduced to approximately 60%.
At the date of acquisition, in addition to cash of approximately $30 million, Lorantis’ assets included a pre-clinical program based upon the discovery of a fundamental immune mechanism, the Notch signaling pathway, that has been shown in preclinical studies to selectively modulate immune responses.
Through the acquisition of Alteris, Celldex obtained exclusive rights to CDX-110, a therapeutic cancer vaccine, previously knowns as ALT-110, currently in an investigator-initiated Phase II clinical trial for the treatment of brain cancer and an investigator-initiated Phase I clinical trial for the treatment of prostate and ovarian cancers. CDX-110 is based on a variant of the epidermal growth factor receptor known as EGFRvIII. In addition, Celldex acquired several patent applications from Alteris covering the Rapid Identification of Alternative Splicing™ system, or RIAS, a proprietary technology platform for the discovery of new disease-specific targets.
It is fascinating to note, that Medarex doesn't even mention this product, when discussing the pipeline. Very few, if any other development stage biotech companies, would forego to mention a product with encouraging results, that is just about to go into a pivotal trial.
Erik |
