Angiosyn Acquired by Pfizer
Thursday January 20, 9:37 pm ET
LA JOLLA, Calif., Jan. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Angiosyn, Inc., a privately held biopharmaceutical company, today announced that it has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Pfizer Inc. The acquisition extends Pfizer's research commitment in ophthalmology and allows the company to further develop Angiosyn's novel angiostatic agent. The agent's primary therapeutic indication is for ophthalmic diseases, such as macular degeneration, in which uncontrolled blood vessel growth can lead to decreased vision and blindness.
Under the agreement, Angiosyn would be merged into a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pfizer, and Angiosyn's stockholders would receive an up front payment and other compensation, which together total up to $527 million, plus royalties on future sales. Full payment is contingent on successful completion of commercial development for an ophthalmic indication and a second therapeutic area. The merger is subject to customary closing conditions (including approval under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976), and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2005.
Paul Schimmel, Ph.D., of The Scripps Research Institute formed Angiosyn in conjunction with venture capital firm Alta Partners in May of 2003. Angiosyn is developing a novel proprietary therapeutic for controlling angiogenesis or uncontrolled blood vessel formation. Angiogenesis is implicated in blinding diseases such as macular degeneration, which affects an estimated 15 million people in the United States and is the leading cause of severe vision loss and blindness for those over the age of 50 in the developed world.
"We are very pleased to have an organization as experienced and committed as Pfizer driving the clinical development and commercialization of our angiostatic compound," said David Mack, Ph.D., Director at Alta Partners and CEO of Angiosyn.
"We anticipate that this agreement with the world's largest pharmaceutical company will result in a new therapy affording greater clinical benefits to patients with serious blinding disease," commented Paul Schimmel, Ph.D., Chairman of Angiosyn.
Martin Mackay, Ph.D., Senior Vice President Worldwide Research & Technology of Pfizer Inc., added: "Pfizer is committed to exploring all opportunities with the potential to deliver new therapeutic agents for clinical investigation. In this respect, we believe that Angiosyn's novel angiostatic agent has the potential to become an important new medicine for the treatment of patients in an area of high medical need and we look forward to developing it further."
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