A good 5 minute read. It shows the way the big drug conglomerates are courting the small bio companies.
Protherics is not mentioned, but must be up there in the sights of those multi million companies.
Licencing deals look the way forward.
Large pharmaceutical companies piggyback onto research, risk By Stephen Pounds
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 10, 2006.
"The big pharmaceutical companies recognize that biotechs are more willing to take risks and do research in areas that are more on the edge of science," said Jim Greenwood, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Biotechnology Industry Organization.
While Big Pharma's own drug discovery dwindles, investors in these behemoth companies worry about where sales will come from when a locker full of major medicines loses patent protection. Once the patents expire, drugs are quickly copied for generic sale by companies such as Miami's Ivax Corp., recently acquired by Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries.
And it's not just Pfizer. Merck & Co.'s Fosamax, its $3 billion treatment for slowing bone loss, comes off patent in 2008; Singulair, the $3 billion drug for controlling chronic asthma, in 2010. Bristol-Myers Squibb loses the anti-clotting drug Plavix, the second largest-selling drug globally, in 2011. And Eli Lilly & Co. will lose exclusivity for Zyprexa, a schizophrenia drug worth $4 billion in annual sales, that same year, said Arthur Wong, an analyst with Standard & Poor's.
That's why Big Pharma mainly targets biotech companies, which have garnered a reputation for nimble scientific discovery.
For full article see link.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/business/content/business/epaper/2006/12/10/a1f_bigpharma_1210.html