A NRDO exits
The NRDO model has been touted by VCs as the wave of the future, because they're quicker from the starting gate to product sales. Ironically, the fate of many of these no research/development only companies may be to be acquired by traditional research-based companies. One potential exemplar is last week's announcement that specialty pharma company ESP Pharma Inc. is being acquired by Protein Design Labs Inc.
In this case, humanized antibody company PDLI (Fremont, Calif.) is forward integrating by acquiring ESP's 75-person hospital-focused sales force and North American commercial infrastructure, plus five marketed small molecule drugs with $90 million in 2004 sales that are expected to generate $100 million in 2005 sales. Shareholders of ESP (Edison, N.J.) now will be looking for leverage from new products in development, a research engine focused on biologics, and development capabilities. ...