Pharmaceutical companies dominated the news during a week that also saw several significant venture deals but little public financing activity. Gino Santini, senior vice president of corporate strategy and business development at Eli Lilly, told attendees at the BIO-Europe forum in Vienna that the company plans to increase the pace of licensing deals and strengthen the role of Chorus, its early-stage research arm.

 

Right after becoming the second largest pharmaceutical company, closing its $41 billion acquisition of Schering-Plough, Merck Chief Executive Richard Clark told the Associated Press that he is already looking to make more deals with “biotech companies that have first or best-in-class products that can build our franchises.” He said that he plans to try to double the number of deals Merck does, which have averaged 50 deals a year since 2003.

 

GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer’ new HIV joint venture, named Viiv, officially opened for business. And Novartis announced plans to invest $1 billion in China over the next five years, increasing the company’s R&D activities, expanding the Novartis Institute of BioMedical Research in Shanghai, and buying an 85 percent stake in privately owned Chinese vaccines company Zhejiang Tianyuan for $125 million to boost its presence in the third largest vaccines market in the world. China recently announced that it will spend about $124 billion over the next three years to improve the nation’s health system. Novartis also announced that it has invested $250 million in a new global technical center which is opening in Changshu, focused on technical research, development and manufacturing activities of active pharmaceutical ingredients. The facility is expected to be a critical part of Novartis’ global production and supply chain network.

 

Japanese pharmaceutical powerhouse Takeda entered into a worldwide exclusive license, development and commercialization agreement with Amylin Pharmaceuticals to co-develop and commercialize pharmaceutical products for the treatment of obesity and related indications. The deal could be worth more than $1 billion for Amylin if all the milestones are met. The agreement includes products to be developed from Amylin's pipeline, including pramlintide/metreleptin and davalintide, which are compounds currently in phase 2 development for treatment of obesity, and additional compounds from both companies' obesity research programs. Amylin will receive an upfront payment of $75 million from Takeda and, is eligible to receive additional payments upon achieving certain development, commercialization and sales-based milestones that could exceed $1 billion. Amylin will also be entitled to royalties based on global product sales.

Both companies will be responsible for development and approval costs, with Takeda assuming about 80 percent of total costs. Takeda will be responsible for all global commercialization costs. Amylin will have the option to co-commercialize the first two approved products in the U.S. and any follow-on products containing the identical active ingredients.

 

Abbott Laboratories is investing $13 million in Enlight Biosciences, joining five big pharmaceutical companies who are backing the Boston-based startup that is developing platform technologies that streamline the process of drug development and reduce risk and cost. Enlight’s big pharma backers include Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, Novartis, and Pfizer. Including the Abbott investment the company has raised $78 million. The company’s business model is to look for innovation in academia and from companies with the pharma members getting early access to the technologies that Enlight and they choose to invest in and develop. The pharma members agree to share the technology with each other in order to improve the chances of success. Enlight was launched by PureTech Ventures of Boston in 2008.

 

German biotech startup Probiodrug closed a series B financing round of more than $54 million from lead new investors BB Biotech and Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners, and LSP Life Science Partners and Biogen Idec New Ventures. Existing institutional shareholders IBG Fonds, TVM Capital, HBM BioVentures, and CFH Group, as well as private investors, also participated in the financing. Probiodrug is developing innovative small molecules for the treatment of neurodegenerative and inflammatory diseases with a particular focus on Alzheimer's disease. The company has a strong focus in the area of glutaminyl cyclase (QC) inhibition, an enzyme emerging with a crucial role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease and various additional inflammatory conditions.

 

Pulmatrix, a Lexington, Massachusetts-based company discovering and developing a new class of therapies for the treatment and prevention of infectious and progressive respiratory diseases, secured $30.2 million in series B financing from ARCH Venture Partners and Novartis Bioventures Fund with participation from existing investors Polaris Venture Partners and 5AM Ventures. The financing will help accelerate the development of Pulmatrix’s product pipeline, including multiple clinical trials in a number of respiratory diseases that will initiate in 2010 and 2011. Currently, Pulmatrix has a drug compound, PUR003, which is being evaluated in Phase 1b/2a trials in influenza, with results from this initial clinical study expected by the end of the year.

 

Cancer diagnostics company, On-Q-ity, raised $21 million in series A funding to develop new technologies to personalize cancer therapy. The funding was led by MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures and included Bessemer Venture Partners, Physic Ventures and Northgate Capital. On-Q-ity is developing diagnostics to determine optimal treatment choice for cancer patients at each stage of the treatment cycle - from the first therapy choice to monitoring for recurrence. On-Q-ity’s President and CEO Mara Aspinall was formerly president of Genzyme Genetics.

 

Alimera Sciences re-filed for an $80 million initial public offering. The Atlanta-based ophthalmic pharmaceutical company’s filing comes less than two months after it withdrew a registration for a $75 million IPO due to “current public market conditions.”

 

Finally, IMS Health was acquired by private equity firm TPG and the Canada Pension Plan in the biggest leveraged buyout this year. The $22 per share deal for the prescription drug sales data provider was a 31 percent premium from the previous day’s closing price and values the company at $5.2 billion including debt. TPG and Canada Pension Plan are paying $4 billion, with TPG being the biggest investor, and Goldman Sachs is providing debt financing.