BioCentury
ARTICLE | Strategy

Antibodies: Back to the future

December 24, 2007 8:00 AM UTC

In the past 18 months or so there has been a land grab by pharma companies seeking access to second-generation biologics platforms. And yet in the past few weeks, two major pharmas have signed alliances with biotech companies with first generation antibody platforms, suggesting that conventional antibodies remain at the core of the biologics arsenal as the next-generation technologies ripen.

Novartis AG (NVS; SWX:NOVN, Basel, Switzerland), which has signed more than a dozen deals in the antibody/protein space, including the £305 million ($627 million) acquisition of NeuTec Pharma plc in 2006, confirmed that antibodies are at the heart of its biologics approach earlier this month with the signing of a far-reaching alliance with MorphoSys AG (FSE:MOR, Martinsried, Germany). ...