MacroGenics buys California-based Raven Biotechnologies
MacroGenics buys California-based Raven Biotechnologies
By Vandana Sinha
Staff Reporter
MacroGenics Inc. has acquired Raven Biotechnologies Inc., a South San Francisco, Calif., cancer stem cell company, in an all-stock transaction.
The deal, whose terms weren’t disclosed, widens the Rockville company’s cancer-fighting capabilities, nine months after it had licensed its key drug candidate and what many considered its cash cow, a Type I diabetes treatment, to Eli Lilly & Co.
MacroGenics leaders said the move is an effort to diversify its offerings and open the door to other pharmaceutical partnerships, so it’s less tied solely to Eli Lilly.
“You can think of this as an acceleration and diversification of our entire platform to make us a much more fully integrated biotechnology company,” said Scott Koenig, president and chief executive officer of MacroGenics. “This creates a lot of opportunities for new partnerships.”
MacroGenics, a privately held company with 104 local employees, is taking over a 48-person company, expecting to downsize that head count to 31 in California. The West Coast employees will remain there, but he said local operations may grow as the combined company pursues plans to take its first cancer stem cell product into clinical trials in the next two years.
The purchase also gives MacroGenics access to Raven’s database of 1,300 antibodies, or drug-fighting proteins, that target a variety of cancers.
The local company plans to combine those antibody candidates with its own platform technology, one of which allows them to kill pathogens more effectively and the other to allow the antibodies to react to multiple cancer targets at once.
MacroGenics also plans to push forward on four other clinical studies by the end of next year, including on treatments for the West Nile Virus, neurological complications and cancer no fax payday loan. In October, the company signed the deal with Eli Lilly, which gave the larger pharmaceutical rights to its trademark diabetes drug for $41 million in up-front cash and up to $200 million in potential payments for meeting other clinical and regulatory milestones — an event that earned MacroGenics some criticism for selling off its most promising drug.
“But we never positioned ourselves as being a single-product company,” Koenig said. “The acquisition of Raven is evidence of that.”
Montgomery & Co. LLC served as the financial adviser to Raven. Arnold & Porter LLP served as legal adviser to MacroGenics.