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Biotech / Medical : Ligand (LGND) Breakout! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bob zagorin who wrote (25659)	9/22/1998 2:56:00 PM
From: Henry Niman	Respond to of 32384

bob, I think that the sales savings comes from using the same sales force to sell ONTAK and Panretin (but the sales force will be new hires of LGND).

To: bob zagorin who wrote (25659)	9/22/1998 3:02:00 PM
From: jayhawk969	Respond to of 32384

Bob, The following is from a Seragen shareholder letter, in late 97. We began downsizing our workforce in December 1996- a difficult but imperative first step in our restructur- ing. Then we agreed, subject to shareholder approval, to sell our costly-to-operate research, clinical trial management and manufacturing facilities to Boston Univer- sity for $5 million. At the same time, we arranged to contract with Boston University for it to continue manu- facturing our products and conducting our research and clinical trial activities using the assets that we will sell to it. While we are selling our physical facilities and transferring associated staff, we are retaining all our existing rights to our intellectual property and products. We were fortunate that Boston University (a major Seragen shareholder committed to our success) could make use of a facility like ours to round out its own biopharmaceutical research and production capacity. Boston University has already assumed financial responsibility for the operating facilities, including a majority of our employees' salaries. After the transaction is finalized, we will have reduced Seragen's direct workforce from some 150 employees to 15 employees. We have cut operating costs substantially while preserving full access to all services necessary to support ongoing programs. Because we will continue working with the same operations team, we anticipate no loss of momentum for our clinical trials. J.D.