A look at this year’s biggest deals shows that a few core players were doing most of the spending. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) stole three of the top-five spots. While these transactions are worth a lot of money on paper, big chunks of the promised dollars depend on successful development, full approval, and sales levels.

GlaxoSmithKline’s deal with [...]

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GlaxoSmithKline and Archemix Corp. today announced a worldwide strategic alliance to discover, develop and commercialise aptamer therapeutics to treat inflammatory diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease. Aptamers are synthetised oligonucleotides, or short nucleic acid sequences, that bind to proteins with high affinity and specificity.
The alliance leverages Archemix’s unique expertise and intellectual property [...]

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AstraZeneca and MAP Pharmaceuticals announced that the companies entered an exclusive worldwide agreement to develop and commercialize unit dose budesonide (UDB) in a deal that could be worth as much as $900 million for MAP. The formulation, which is designed to be nebulised more quickly and used at a lower dose than currently available asthma [...]

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Pfizer and Auxilium Pharmaceuticals announced that the companies entered into a licensing agreement potentially worth up to $485 million for Auxilium, for the development and marketing of Xiaflex (clostridial collagenase) in European and Eurasian countries. The experimental drug is a first-in-class biologic for the treatment of Dupuytren’s contracture and Peyronie’s disease, the companies said. Auxilium [...]

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On Wednesday, GlaxoSmithKline and Dynavax Technologies reported that the companies are partnering to discover, develop and market first-in-class inhibitors of endosomal Toll-like receptors for the treatment of immuno-inflammatory diseases, in a deal that could be valued at more than $800 million for the US biotechnology firm.

Under the terms of the deal, GlaxoSmithKline will receive an [...]

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Teva Pharmaceuticals and Jexys Pharmaceuticals has signed an R&D agreement that includes platform development and drug discovery. Teva will finance Jexys Pharmaceuticals’ development of a high-throughput drug discovery platform. In return it will receive a minority equity interest in Jexys Pharmaceuticals.

Teva also has the option to choose and in-license five drug candidates discovered by Jexys [...]

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MIP Technologies has entered into a collaboration with sanofi-aventis for the development of new molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) for the analysis of pharmacologically active peptides from plasma samples.

“We are looking to move into the development of peptide-selective MIPs, which represents a valuable piece of the separations market and has applications in analytical, preparative, and process-scale [...]

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AstraZeneca and Bristol-Myers Squibb announced Monday the expansion of their worldwide diabetes partnership to include the development and marketing of dapagliflozin in Japan.

The drugmakers entered into a global collaboration in January 2007 to develop and commercialise the drug outside Japan. Under the revised agreement, AstraZeneca will be responsible for all development and regulatory activities in [...]

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Astellas Pharma obtained rights to use Millipore’s UCOE™ (ubiquitous chromatin opening element) technology in its research programs. The worldwide, nonexclusive license will allow the company to produce its drug targets such as antibodies in mammalian cells by generating higher protein yields.

Millipore’s UCOE technology can be used to generate proteins at a small scale for drug [...]

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Mentor, headquartered in Southern California, is also waiting to hear from the U.S. FDA about its face fillers, a rather controversial area at the moment. Medicis’s Restylane and Allergan’s Juvederm are leaders in the area.

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