The Millennium acquisition is the latest in a series of moves by the Osaka, Japan–based company to reinvent itself as a truly global player. In February, it inked a trillion-dollar agreement with Amgen of Thousand Oaks, California, for exclusive rights in Japan to up to 13 compounds for cancer and other diseases from the US biotech's pipeline (Nat. Biotechnol. 26, 366, 2008). Then, in March, Takeda entered an agreement with Cell Genesys of San Francisco, offering $320 million for the commercialization and development rights to GVAX, an immunotherapy targeting prostate cancer that is currently in phase 3 clinical trials in patients with advanced prostate cancer. And the spending continued: with the termination of a 30-year-old joint venture with Chicago-based Abbott Laboratories, Takeda agreed to pay up to $1.5 billion for the exclusive rights to the ulcer drug Prevacid (lansoprazole).
One driver for the Millennium acquisition is Takeda's desire to be a bigger player in the oncology market. “In the short and medium term, of course, [Millennium's] Velcade is extremely valuable,” notes Takeda CEO Yasuchika Hasegawa. “However, when you look at growth over the medium to long term, there is a fantastic amount of value there in terms of the people (both the research and the business teams), the pipeline and the infrastructure. What we really wanted to buy was Millennium—the whole thing, as it is.”
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