Eisai To Acquire Morphotek

Eisai Co., Ltd., Eisai Corp. of North America (ECA), has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Morphotek, Inc. for $325 million in cash.

Morphotek develops therapeutic monoclonal antibodies through the use of proprietary human antibody technologies, including Human Morphodoma and Libradoma. The company is using these technologies to enrich its pipeline that includes therapeutic antibody leads for the treatment of cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, and infectious disease. Two of its programs are currently in early stage trials for the treatment of ovarian cancer and pancreatic cancer, respectively, with several others in preclinical development.

Eisai currently has an extensive global oncology research program for discovering small molecule anti-cancer agents, and upon completion of the acquisition, will expand its capabilities into the biologic therapeutics field.

Eisai president Haruo Naito, said, “I sincerely respect Dr. Nicolaides’ innovative and courageous endeavor in developing human monoclonal antibody therapeutics. He has made a tremendous contribution to that effort. By combining Morphotek’s proprietary technologies and promising therapeutic antibodies with Eisai’s existing research programs and infrastructure, we will be able to meet our goal of addressing the unmet medical needs of patients, especially cancer patients, all around the world. Morphotek’s rich pipeline, unique and proprietary antibody generation technology platform, and highly skilled management and scientific team will become the core of our R&D efforts in biologics.”

Nicholas Nicolaides, chief executive officer of Morphotek, said, “Eisai’s substantial intellectual and managerial resources will enable us to accelerate the development of our current therapeutic antibody pipeline as well as develop a number of additional clinical compounds to targets accessed from our broad network of research collaborations and to those discovered by Eisai researchers globally.”

Once the transaction is complete, Morphotek will become part of Eisai’s global discovery and development research network, which is comprised of research labs in Japan, Europe and the U.S. The addition of Morphotek further extends Eisai’s research presence in the U.S., which includes the Eisai Research Institute of Boston, Inc., a discovery operation based in Andover, MA, Eisai Medical Research Inc., for clinical development, located in Ridgefield Park, NJ, and RTP lab for formulation research in NC.

The acquisition, which is subject to clearance under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act and other customary closing conditions, is expected to close during Eisai’s 1Q2007.