Onyx: It could be worse

Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc. last week announced a solution to a problem all biotech companies wish they had: their new partner wants more than the old one did.

The great fear of biotech companies is that their deals will get dumped when a pharma partner is acquired. But ONXX had the opposite problem arise. Under a 1995 deal with Warner-Lambert Co., the companies were developing ONXX's CI-1042 (ONYX-015) mainly for head and neck cancer. But when Pfizer Inc. acquired Warner-Lambert last year, PFE decided to expand and accelerate the program. As a result, ONXX has had to scramble to come up with sufficient adenoviral CI-1042 material...