Word: biotechs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Wall Street's recent drug addiction strikes some as ironic. Robert Erwin, CEO of the Vaca Valley, Calif., biotech firm Large Scale Biology, recalls being told all last year that investors were interested only in hearing about his company's technology. "Now the advice I get is, 'Don't talk about your technology. People only want to hear about your products...
Millennium Pharmaceuticals of Cambridge, Mass., has been a step ahead of most competitors. It announced on Dec. 6 the acquisition of COR Therapeutics of South San Francisco, Calif., for a stock swap worth $2 billion--the largest in biotech history and Millennium's fourth acquisition in as many years. That was just the latest in a series of mergers that have changed the face of the industry. Last month Celera Genomics, once the quintessential genetic information-services company, paid $174 million for Axys Pharmaceuticals of South San Francisco, a master designer of drugs. Another major information-services firm, Incyte Genomics...
...human genes into yeast cells and effectively "fish" for proteins relevant to drug discovery. "We learned at the seat of the inventor of this technology," boasts technology group leader Bruce Taillon, "and showed him what would happen when CuraGen was set loose on it." The company stunned the biotech world in January, when it announced a 15-year, $1.4 billion deal with Bayer to develop drugs against obesity and diabetes. "CuraGen has a mastery of the genome," says CEO Jonathan Rothberg. "We needed a large drug company like Bayer to help us turn that mastery into a product...
...investment has paid off. HGS moved a drug against autoimmune disease into clinical trials within 18 months of its discovery. Haseltine has managed his pharmaceutical aspirations astutely, building commercial manufacturing facilities for proteins years in advance--aware that a lack of capacity has hampered some of the most exciting biotech drugs. "It is my belief that if a skill is critical to your success," says Haseltine, "you must build it and control it yourself." But underscoring the risks of drug discovery, HGS's shares dropped 10% last week when it announced that its leading drug in clinical trials is safe...
Proteomics is all the rage in Europe as well. The British biotech Oxford GlycoSciences announced this month that it had filed for patents on 4,000 proteins. It has $280 million in cash reserves and is awaiting U.S. and European approval of a drug for Gaucher disease, a rare inherited disorder...