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AZN buys Amplimmune



AstraZeneca to buy U.S. cancer firm for up to $500 mln

LONDON, Aug 26 (Reuters) - AstraZeneca Plc took a further step to bolster its pipeline of new cancer drugs on Monday by agreeing to acquire privately held U.S. biotech company Amplimmune for up to $500 million.

The deal is the second within 24 hours in the cancer drug space, following Amgen Inc's much larger acquisition of Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc for about $10.4 billion.

Amplimmune specialises in developing treatments designed to help the immune system fight cancer and the purchase will give AstraZeneca access to a number of compounds currently in pre-clinical development.

Amplimmune's product line-up includes AMP-514, an anti-programmed cell death 1 (PD-1) medicine that is expected to ready for testing in patients later this year.

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