Replies to post #61271 on Biotech Values

[Preciouslife1]

Big buyout for Millennium Pharmaceuticals

http://dailybriefing.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/04/10/big-buyout-for-millennium-pharmaceuticals/?source=yahoo_quote

Millennium Pharmaceuticals (MLNM) got a shot in the arm Thursday when Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceutical agreed to fork over $8.8 billion in cash for the Cambridge, Mass., cancer-drug developer. The $25-a-share deal gives Millennium shareholders a 53% premium to Wednesday’s closing prices, and allows Takeda to put some of its $17 billion cash hoard to work. The deal also gives Takeda Millennium’s Velcade oncology drug, as well as a drug for inflammatory bowel disease that’s under development. Millennium’s management will continue after the Takeda acquisition, the companies said.

“Millennium greatly strengthens Takeda’s global oncology portfolio, led by the flagship product Velcade, and further enhances its pipeline with clinically differentiated, high-quality product candidates,” said Yasuchika Hasegawa, president of Takeda. “Takeda is committed to becoming a global leader in oncology by delivering novel therapies that improve the standards of care for patients.” Takeda doesn’t expect the deal to add to earnings till 2010, but noted that “the addition of Millennium will enhance Takeda’s growth profile immediately.”

Domo Arigato, and kunichiwa Takeda, says MLNM CEO

[DewDiligence]

The MLNM acquisition perhaps makes more sense when one considers how much “catching up” Japan’s Big Pharma has to do to reach parity with its US and European counterparts. #msg-26484658 is a good quick read on the topic, IMO.

[DewDiligence]

Millennium’s Mark Levin Is At It Again

http://www.boston.com/business/healthcare

>>
Will stars align again for biotech backer?

By Todd Wallack
April 29, 2008

Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc. cofounder Mark Levin has long been a key figure in the region's biotech industry. Known for his colorful shirts and even bolder statements, Levin, 57, once predicted Millennium would become a $100 billion company and revolutionize the way drugs work by unraveling the body's genetic code. Though the Cambridge biotech has yet to fulfill that promise, Levin raised impressive sums of money and built the company into one of the area's most prominent biotechnology companies as chief executive from 1993 to 2005. Two weeks ago, Japan's Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. agreed to buy the company for $8.8 billion, the biggest deal ever in the local biotech industry.

Now Levin, a venture capitalist and Millennium board member, is going public with his next project. He's interim chief executive for Constellation Pharmaceuticals Inc., a start-up that Levin claims will pioneer new drugs by harnessing epigenetics, research into ways genes can be switched on or off through chemicals without altering the underlying DNA sequence. Levin says Constellation will initially try to develop cancer drugs, but eventually tackle other diseases.

"The sky's the limit here," said Levin, sporting a yellow Livestrong bracelet and Nike Michael Jordan T-shirt. Typical of Levin, he wore the shirt during a photo shoot for this story, despite a publicist's request that he change into more traditional business attire.

Today, Levin's venture capital fund, Third Rock Ventures in Boston, plans to say it and other investors have committed $32 million to Constellation to get the company off the ground, an unusually large amount for a first round of funding. Temporarily, Levin and the cofounders are working out of Third Rock's offices above a Newbury Street cafe in Boston, but they plan to move to new offices in Cambridgeport next month, not far from where Millennium is based. Levin said he is busy recruiting a permanent chief executive, other managers, and scientists and hopes to have a team of 20 to 25 employees in place by the end of the year.

Constellation isn't the only company trying to mine epigenetics. Venture capital firms MPM Capital of Boston and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers have quietly launched EpiZyme Inc., an epigenetics company focused on drugs for cancer and other diseases. The five-month-old biotech, which has office space in Waltham and North Carolina, has been trying to recruit researchers in Massachusetts and Chapel Hill, N.C. Chief executive Kazumi Shiosaki, an MPM partner who formerly worked at Millennium, could not be reached for comment, and another executive said the firm isn't ready to talk publicly. EpiZyme's existence was first reported last week by the trade publication Mass High Tech.

"People think [epigenetics] has potential to have a substantial impact on therapies," said Terry McGuire, a partner with Polaris Venture Partners in Waltham. But, he cautioned, "it's relatively early and there is a lot more work that has to be done."

More established drug companies, such as Novartis AG and AstraZeneca, are also pursuing epigenetics. And two biotech companies that were recently sold for billions of dollars, MGI Pharma Inc. and Pharmion Corp., have both developed epigenetic drugs.

"It's on the frontier of medical research," said En Li, who runs Novartis's 15-person epigenetics program in Cambridge. "It deserves some attention and some focus."

While biologists have historically focused more on DNA - the body's genetic code - scientists are increasingly trying to figure out how chemicals regulate which pieces of the code are activated. Much of the focus in epigenetics is on a group of enzymes that help control how tightly DNA is coiled around a group of proteins called histones. Genes can only be activated when key slices of DNA are unwrapped, allowing the data to be accessed to manufacture proteins. If drug companies can control the way DNA is coiled, they can decide which slivers to activate or shut off.

Levin said Constellation has an advantage because it is starting with a significant pool of cash and some of the field's leading academics researchers. Its founders are three scientists: Harvard University pathologist Yang Shi, New York University biochemist Danny Reinberg, and Rockefeller University biologist David Allis. Two of them, Reinberg and Allis, edited one of the few textbooks focusing on epigenetics.

"We believe we are going to be the dominant leader in this field," Levin said. Even Constellation's name suggests the breadth of the company's ambitions. Levin said the company considered scores of names but thought Constellation conveyed a "feeling of bigness and importance."

Constellation initially plans to concentrate on two enzymes - lysine methyltransferase and lysine demethylase - that Levin says have immense potential for cancer research, but have garnered little attention from drug companies so far. Once the company's offices are set up in Cambridge, Levin said, scientists will start screening thousands of known compounds to see if any appear to affect the enzymes.

But the company will also face challenges. Much about the science is still not fully understood. And Massachusetts Institute of Technology biologist Rudolf Jaenisch, who has studied epigenetics' role in cancer for more than a decade, said researchers have tried unsuccessfully before to find drugs to effectively control the mechanisms Constellation is targeting. "It's really not an easy thing," Jaenisch said.

Constellation isn't the only company Third Rock is backing. The venture firm also recently invested in Zafgen Inc., which is trying to find novel treatments for obesity. The company, operating out of Third Rock's offices on Newbury Street, has so far raised $23 million.

Levin, though, is playing a greater role in Constellation, which he says could have as great an impact on drug development through epigenetics as Millennium had through genomics. Yet 15 years after Millennium's founding, Millennium still hasn't brought to market a drug developed with its genomics expertise. Its only drug currently on the market, a cancer therapy called Velcade, was originally developed by a company Millennium bought. Still, Levin says Millennium is testing a number of promising medicines that might someday be used to treat diseases.

"In the biotechnology business, it takes a long time to find the right drugs," he said, about 15 years on average. "And that's from a fully integrated pharmaceuticals company. When you are building a company from zero, you cannot necessarily expect to develop a drug in 15 years."

Similarly, Levin acknowledges Constellation won't cure cancer overnight.
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