Big pharma goes biotech shopping

The big news today is that AstraZeneca, one of Britain’s largest pharmaceutical firms, has bought Cambridge Antibody Technology, also based in England. It’s a deal worth $1.07 billion.

For more details, see stories here, http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/15/bloomberg/bxastra.php, or here, http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060516/NEWS/605160367/1006, or here, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/05/16/cnastra16.xml&menuId=242&sSheet=/money/2006/05/16/ixcity.html.

Observers point out that AstraZeneca has its back up against the wall a bit, as it faces the imminent loss of patent protection on drugs that provide about 40 percent of sales. But most of the news articles are also seeing the day as another sign that traditional pharmaceutical companies — “big pharma,” as they’re known in industry slang — are moving further into biotechnology.

The reasons are easy to see: In the U.S., for three years in a row now, the biotech industry has surpassed pharmaceutical companies as the primary source of new medicines, according to a new report released last month at BIO 2006, http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/business/14360669.htm. That helped increase overall biotech revenue last year to a record $50.7 billion.