Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Business and Regulatory News
  • Published:

In Brief

Nature Biotechnology volume 19, pages 703–705 (2001)Cite this article

Celera buys Axys

On June 13, Celera Genomics (Rockville, MD) said it would acquire Axys Pharmaceuticals (S. San Francisco, CA) in a stock swap valued at $174.4 million. Friedman Billings Ramsey (New York) analyst Jonathan Aschoff says Axys's strong medicinal chemistry capabilities and unpartnered oncology programs, combined with a modest price, were the main draw for Celera: the purchase moves Celera downstream toward drug discovery and development by adding necessary chemistry expertise, intellectual property, and facilities to its technology platform. Analysts doubt the long-term potential of genomics content providers, as increasing amounts of publicly available data threaten to make genomic information a commodity. Adding chemistry and target validation capabilities are necessary steps to build a gene-to-drug platform. “Information wants to be free,” says Aschoff. “You can't just sell data forever.” Also in June, knockout company Lexicon Genetics (The Woodlands, TX) acquired Coelacanth (Princeton, NJ), a privately held developer of chemical libraries, for $32 million in stock. CM

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

In Brief. Nat Biotechnol 19, 703–705 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/90728

Download citation

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/90728

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing