Lilly to acquire SGX Pharmaceuticals

In a surprise announcement, Lilly declared today that they have signed a definitive merger agreement with SGX Pharmaceuticals in an all-cash transaction. Under the terms of the agreement, Lilly will acquire all of the outstanding shares of SGX common stock at a price of $3.00 per share, for a total value of approximately $64.0 million. Lilly were one of the existing companies who had partner deals with SGX.

SGX is a biotechnology company based in San Diego. It is focused on oncology drug discovery and development.

The acquisition will give Lilly an opportunity to integrate SGX's structure-guided drug discovery platform into its drug discovery efforts. It will also give them access to FAST™, SGX's fragment-based, protein structure guided drug discovery technology, and to a portfolio of pre-clinical oncology compounds focused on a number of high-value kinase targets.

One of the promising agents, SGX393, may be active in Gleevec resistant T315I mutations in CML, which are also resistant to other therapies currently available including Tasigna (nilotinib) and Sprycel (dasatinib).

The acquisition, if successful, will give Lilly a promising oncology pipeline for the future.

Source:

Lilly