ActivX Biosciences Announces Closing of Acquisition by Kyorin Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.
February 2, 2005
La Jolla, CA; February 2, 2005 – ActivX Biosciences, Inc., a biotechnology company developing advanced proteomic technologies for drug discovery and development, has announced the formal completion of its acquisition by Tokyo-based Kyorin Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (TSE: 4560). The acquisition agreement was signed on December 1, 2004 for an aggregate price of $21,000,000. With the completion of the transaction, ActivX survives as a wholly-owned subsidiary and will serve as Kyorin’s drug discovery and development center in the U.S.
Kyorin and ActivX have been collaborating since May 2002 to discover new drugs for the treatment of type II diabetes. The collaboration was expanded in early 2004 to cover other metabolic diseases. The ActivX acquisition gives Kyorin a research network covering Japan, Europe and the United States.
Under the terms of the agreement, Dr. John W. Kozarich, former President and Chief R&D Officer, becomes Chairman and President of ActivX and Chief Scientific Advisor of Kyorin. “The acquisition of ActivX by Kyorin is a landmark event for both companies,” stated Dr. Kozarich. “The Kyorin/ActivX collaborations have been successful and convinced Kyorin of the value of the ActivX technologies to enhance their impressive Japanese R&D capabilities. The acquisition provides us with a unique opportunity to create a new paradigm for a U.S.-based Japanese research center.”
“The ActivX acquisition is a key component in Kyorin’s strategy to create an innovative global drug discovery network,” said Mr. Ikuo Ogihara, President of Kyorin. “Their powerful technologies have already demonstrated their ability to optimize the efficiency of identifying new lead compounds and accelerating the time to “proof of concept” for candidate compounds.”
Kyorin anticipates that ActivX’s collaborations with major pharmaceutical companies will continue in order to expand the technological platform and to foster future scientific and business relationships in the U.S. and elsewhere.
About ActivX Biosciences, Inc.
ActivX Biosciences, Inc. (www.activx.com), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tokyo-based Kyorin Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., in La Jolla, California, is applying proprietary chemical technologies and high-throughput protein analysis to the drug discovery process. By focusing on functional proteins, ActivX addresses disease mechanisms directly, in contrast to approaches such as expression profiling, in which the measured analyte is several steps removed from the site of drug action. ActivX and its partners are using its proprietary technology to address critical challenges in drug discovery, including selectivity profiling of candidate drug molecules across whole protein families in biological samples to guide their medicinal chemistry optimization; identifying novel drug targets and biomarkers; and characterizing off-target activities of candidate and established drugs to understand the basis for their efficacy and toxicity.
About Kyorin Pharmaceutical
Kyorin Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (www.kyorin-pharm.co.jp) is a fully integrated, research-oriented pharmaceutical company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, with a focus in the areas of infectious diseases, immunology and allergic diseases and metabolic diseases. Some of its key products and development compounds include Norfloxacin (first new quinolone antibiotic licensed to Merck and Co.) and Gatifloxacin (novel new quinolone antibiotic licensed in the US to Bristol-Myers Squibb). In addition to ActivX, it has extended its research capabilities through the establishment of Kyorin-Scotland Research Laboratories in conjunction with Scottish Biomedical Foundation Limited and with the formation of an affiliate company, Nisshin Kyorin Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd.
| © 2007 ActivX Biosciences, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of Kyorin Pharmaceutical Co, Ltd. |  info@activx.com |