Prometheus, Nestle deal
Nestle's Nestle Health Science S.A. subsidiary will acquire diagnostics and specialty pharma company Prometheus for an undisclosed sum. The Nestle unit, established in January to market nutritional products, said the acquisition will help it move into gastrointestinal diagnostics. Prometheus' diagnostic portfolio includes its Prometheus Crohn's Prognostic test and its Prometheus IBD Serology 7 to diagnose inflammatory bowel disease. Nestle's Nestle Institute of Health Sciences unit, which translates biomedical research into nutritional strategies, also plans to use Prometheus' R&D platform to develop personalized nutritional solutions in other areas of interest, including metabolic conditions, cancer and brain health.
Prometheus, which will operate as a unit within Nestle, said it will continue to market its products and develop its R&D pipeline. Prometheus has U.S. rights from Novartis AG (NYSE:NVS; SIX:NOVN, Basel, Switzerland) to market Proleukin aldesleukin, an IL-2 agonist to treat metastatic melanoma and metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Earlier this month, Wilex AG (Xetra:WL6, Munich, Germany) granted Prometheus U.S. rights to commercialize cancer candidate Rencarex girentuximab, which is in Phase III testing for non-metastatic clear cell renal cell cancer (ccRCC). Rencarex is a chimeric mAb against carbonic anhydrase IX (CAIX) (see BioCentury, May 9). ...