On June 23, Millennium (Cambridge, MA) and Aventis Pharma, the pharmaceutical division of Aventis (Frankfurt, Germany), announced a “groundbreaking alliance” to develop and market drugs to treat inflammatory conditions. The $450 million deal is the first biotech–pharma collaboration based on equal terms—Millennium has demanded a 50% share of the profits from future US drug sales, but will also contribute half of the drug development costs. As well as taking Millennium further towards becoming a biopharmaceutical company, the deal illustrates the increasing price tag on biotech intellectual property and the growing bargaining power of the biotech sector.
The agreement is complex and “not one deal, but several,” according to Alan Crane, Millennium's vice president of corporate development. It comprises four elements: the joint development of technologies that will expedite drug discovery, an equity investment, technology transfer, and drug development. Millennium will receive a total of $450 million: $250 million will be invested in equity, giving Aventis a 2.5% stake in the company. Millennium will receive a further $200 million in cash over the next 5 years in exchange for the non-exclusive transfer of its technologies such as sequencing, informatics, transcriptional profiling, and proteomics.
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