Busy Evans-Freke lands deals

Sugen Inc. and Selectide Corp., two companies founded by Stephen Evans-Freke, scored a one-two punch last week, forming collaborations respectively with Amgen Inc. and Synergen Inc. that will help fill gaps in the larger companies' product development pipelines in the latter part of the decade. Then the two small privately held companies turned around and formed their own alliance, which was set to be announced today.

None of the parties are strangers to each other. Evans-Freke founded Paine-Webber Development Corp., which did both AMGN's and SYGN's clinical partnerships. And David Madden, president of Selectide, used to work at PDC...