Cambridge Antibody, AstraZeneca deal

AZN agreed to buy the 80.8% of CAT it does not already own for 1,320p per share in cash, or £567 million ($1 billion). The price is a 67% premium to CAT's close of 791p on May 12, the last trading day before the deal was announced, and values the antibody company at £702 million ($1.3 billion). AZN said CAT will be the cornerstone of its push into biological therapeutics, which the pharma company expects to account for 25% of candidates in development starting in 2010.

AZN and CAT have been pursuing joint discovery programs under a 2004 deal. CAT has phage and ribosome display platforms, as well as a pipeline of protein therapeutics, including CAT-3888, which is in Phase II testing for hairy cell leukemia. CAT acquired the recombinant immunotoxin that targets cancers derived from B cells that express CD22 last year from Genencor International Inc., a subsidiary of Danisco A/S (Copenhagen, Denmark) (see BioCentury, Nov. 7, 2005). AZN also will get access to the royalty stream associated with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) antibody Humira adalimumab from Abbott Laboratories (ABT, Abbott Park, Ill.). ...