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Seems the GlaxoSmithKline business development groups has been very busy lately. Earlier today I posted about GSK acquiring Praecis and before that they acquired Domantis. Now they are concentrating on deals and have entered into a large one with Genmab.

PharmaLive: GlaxoSmithKline and Genmab Enter Global Agreement For HuMax-CD20
GSK sign world’s-biggest licensing deal with Genmab:

This deal is worth $2.7 billion making it the largest deal that I know of (the Erbitux deal between Bristol-Myers Squibb and Imclone was $2 billion).

HuMax-CD20 (ofatumumab) is a human monoclonal antibody in phase III clinical trials for treatment of CD20 positive B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia and follicular non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Is it also being investigated in phase II trials for rheumatoid arthritis. Analysts (whose numbers I take with a block of salt) say the market for it could be $2-5 billion! GSK hopes to be able to fill an NDA for the compound sometime in 2008.

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Mergers are continuing, this time GlaxoSmithKline is acquiring the biotech company Praecis Pharmaceuticals for $5.00 per share for a total of $54.8 million in cash.

PharmaLive: GlaxoSmithKline To Acquire Praecis Pharmaceuticals

It is unclear to me if the products and technologies offered by Praecis (at least that is publicly available) are worth this price. They have one candidate PRI-2458 a small molecule that falls into the anti-angeogenesis or formation of blood vessels. It is being investigated for non-Hodgekins Lymphoma and other There are also two technologies; one called DirectSelect that involves selecting compounds from a library for further study. The other technology is
Rel-Ease a drug delivery technology offering sustained release.

While these technologies are interesting, they both fall into categories that are somewhat crowded and it is very difficult determine which may be the best. Maybe GSK sees some specific uses for this technology and it fits their product portfolio.

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