Friday, April 11, 2008

Understanding Yesterday's Millennium Pharma Deal

The acquisition yesterday of Millennium Pharmaceuticals by a Japanese firm for $8.8 billion is a big deal -- the biggest ever in the Massachusetts biotech industry.

The Globe's Jeff Krasner has some really solid analysis of Millennium's saga, which began with a lot of lofty predictions about the power of genomic information. Krasner writes:

    Nobody did more to raise those unrealistic expectations than Mark J. Levin, Millennium's cofounder and longtime chief executive. In December 2001, he told Technology Review that Millennium would use genomics to become wildly successful. He said: "Over the next five to 10 years, our goal is to become a company that's leading the world in personalized medicines, a company that is leading the world in productivity, a company with a value of over $100 billion, a company that has five to 10 products on the market that are making a big difference in people's lives, a company with the strongest pipeline in the entire industry."

    But beyond building lavish headquarters and striking licensing deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Millennium, the company didn't produce. Its two cancer-fighting drugs, Campath and Velcade, came about the old-fashioned way: Millennium bought the smaller companies that developed the drugs. Millennium has since sold its rights to Campath to Genzyme Corp.


In a column from last August, I talked about Millennium as a font of big picture, deal-making CEOs for smaller biotechs, including Alnylam, Infinity, and Tempo.

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