Word: hybritech
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Some drug companies have decided that the best way to join the business is to swallow biotech firms whole. Eli Lilly announced in September that it would pay $300 million for San Diego-based Hybritech, one of the leaders in the development of monoclonal antibodies, which are proteins that could potentially help diagnose and conquer diseases like cancer. Last week Bristol-Myers said it would buy Seattle's Genetic Systems, another specialist in monoclonal antibodies, for $260 million...
...small, research-oriented companies in the industry may need the resources and expertise of a large corporation to bring their discoveries quickly and successfully to market. The question remains whether or not biotech innovation will continue to flourish under the banner of the FORTUNE 500. Hybritech President David Hale, for one, thinks that it will. Says he: "We will continue to operate independently, and we feel that the company can still foster its entrepreneurial atmosphere as a subsidiary of Lilly...
...June, after Hybritech's scientists proved they could fuse cells commercially, Greene found three venture-capital firms to invest $1.6 million, which then seemed "an astronomical amount of money." By the end of the year, the scientists produced the world's first commercially manufactured monoclonal antibody, which acted against hepatitis. Licensed just for research, Hybritech sold only $10,000 worth of the first batch, mostly to inquisitive rival labs...
When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave Hybritech clearance in May 1981 for its first commercial product, a diagnostic test for allergies, the firm was still "losing money like crazy." But Greene decided to go public, hoping to sell 2 million shares at $20. In the two months it took to organize the sale, the market plunged; Hybritech sold only 1.2 million shares at $11. "A window was slamming shut," Greene recalls...
...spent the next two years keeping that window open. A new federal rule allowing tax breaks for investments in research helped lure prospective backers. Sales climbed, the stock rose, and Greene launched another offering that sold 1.4 million shares at $26.75. Today Hybritech produces 40% of all the monoclonal antibody products on the market, notably diagnostic kits to test for allergies, pregnancy, prostate cancer and thyroid deficiencies. The company's sales went from $6.9 million in 1983 to an estimated $14.5 million in 1984, and its profit for 1984 will be $1.3 million...