Merck buys antibody design specialists
pharmafile | May 10, 2006 | News story | Research and Development |Â Â Â
Merck is to buy a pioneering biotech company, which discovers new monoclonal antibodies and then re-engineers them to make them more effective.
Merck will pay $80 million to buy the privately held Californian biotech company called Abmaxis, which the pharma company hopes will help it re-establish its reputation for excellence in R&D.
Abmaxis was founded in 2000 and caught the attention of the pharma industry with its innovative antibody engineering technology platform, called Abmaxis in-silico Immunisation (AISIM), which uses computational design to create the best antibody structure to target a disease mechanism. The company then experiments with a selection of antibodies to find the best optimised human or humanised monoclonal antibodies.
The potential of this technology was proved to Merck when Abmaxis began work on one of its monoclonal antibodies in 2004, and successfully re-engineered it to improve 70-fold its ability to bind to its target while retaining the accuracy of its targeting.
"The overwhelming success of that collaboration was a key factor in Merck's decision to pursue an acquisition with Abmaxis," said Merv Turner, Merck's head of worldwide licensing and external research. That and a visit in March to Abmaxis' headquarters by a Merck team headed by Dr. Kim led to the decision that "this is the kind of superb science we want to bring into Merck."
Dr Turner added that the Abmaxis technology would also help make Merck a partner of choice for biotechnology companies seeking to develop antibodies against their internal targets.
"Ours has been an excellent collaboration of scientific talent, and we are delighted at this most recent turn in Abmaxis' relationship with Merck," said Shirley Clayton, chief executive of Abmaxis. "We are confident that Merck can maximise the value of our novel technology platform to expand its presence in the biologics field."
Dr Peter Luo, Abmaxis co-founder and chief technology officer added: "We are excited by Merck's new game plan and its commitment to build world-class research and development capabilities in biologics. We are looking forward to working with Merck colleagues to achieve that goal."
Merck appointed Richard Clark as its new chief executive in 2005, and the company's new leader has now unveiled a complete overhaul of all its business practices, including its R&D model, which it says is being re-defined from start to finish.
This is being done by increasing productivity internally and through licensing and by adopting some of the most advanced scientific techniques and technology. The company says early stage productivity is already improving, with four times more compounds entering its pipelines in 2005 compared to 2001.
