GSK spends £61 million to take full control of Cellzome

The UK’s biggest pharmaceutical manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), has announced it will be spending £61 million to take full control of Cellzome.

GSK currently owns just under 20 percent of Cellzome, a leader in the development and advancement of proteomics technologies.

It has gained it the remaining 80.2 percent of the company, in a deal worth the equivalent to US$99 million.

GlaxoSmithKline hopes that by using Cellzome’s technology it will be able to reduce the number of drugs that fail during the development process.

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Cellzome’s proteomics technologies can be used throughout the drug discovery process, from screening to selectivity profiling of compounds in different cells and also in patient samples.

The technologies that Cellzome has developed differ from other traditional methods used in early drug discovery by assessing drug interactions with target proteins in a setting which more closely represents that found in a whole biological system.

This allows scientists the opportunity to observe how candidate drugs affect both intended and non-desired targets in a close-to-physiological environment and may pinpoint potential safety issues earlier in the process.

Commenting on the acquisition of Cellzome, John Baldoni, the senior vice president of Platform & Technology Science at GSK, said: “The acquisition of Cellzome adds significantly to our scientific capabilities and capacity to characterise drug targets and provides the opportunity to further enhance GSK’s ability to bring medicines to patients in a more effective manner.

Meanwhile Tim Edwards, CEO of Cellzome, added: “We are pleased to announce this transaction, which will enable GSK to progress the technologies that we have been developing for more than a decade.

“This follows nearly four years of successful collaboration with GSK, during which time we demonstrated the value and breadth of the Cellzome platform for drug discovery.”

Cellzome is a privately owned company with laboratories in Cambridge, UK, and Heidelberg, Germany.

It will become part of GSK’s R&D organisation, and it is the pharmaceutical firm’s third platform technology acquisition since 2007.

The acquisition is not subject to any third party approvals and is anticipated to complete on 21 May 2012.

Source: GSK

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