Pharmexa acquires assets from IDM Pharma and establishes US subsidiary
Pharmexa, a Danish biotech company active in the immunotherapy field, is to acquire certain assets from US biopharmaceutical company IDM Pharma.
Pharmexa, a Danish biotech company active in the immunotherapy field, is to acquire certain assets from US biopharmaceutical company IDM Pharma.
The assets are related to the former San Diego-based company Epimmune, which was recently merged with IDM SA. They include a fully operational and equipped r&d facility in San Diego, California, certain immunotherapy technology and intellectual property (approximately 250 issued and pending patents) as well as a partly funded clinical pipeline focused on infectious diseases.
Pharmexa will offer employment to 27 employees currently at the facility. To fund the acquisition price of $12m in cash, the Pharmexa board of directors plans to increase the share capital with 3.4 million shares in a private placement.
The transaction enables IDM to focus on its five clinical stage cancer programs and increase its cash position.
Jean-Loup Romet-Lemonne, chairman and ceo of IDM, said: 'Following the August 2005 closing of our IDM-Epimmune business combination, we decided to focus our resources on our oncology product candidate pipeline and reduce our cash burn. This divestiture of our infectious disease programs to Pharmexa provides us significant additional cash resources without dilution. We are now able to redirect resources to our most advanced clinical programs in cancer, including our lead product candidate, Junovan, which has completed Phase III trials for the treatment of osteosarcoma, a bone cancer diagnosed mainly in adolescents.'