The driving force behind the deal was Onyx's securing accelerated approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last year for Kyprolis (carfilzomib), a second-generation proteasome inhibitor, as a treatment for relapsed multiple myeloma (Nat. Biotechnol. 30, 1011–1012, 2012). Net sales for Kyprolis in the second quarter of 2013 were $61 million, and some analysts predict peak sales of $2 billion or higher if it secures expanded indications and EU approval.
Onyx was founded in 1992 by venture capitalist Kevin Kinsella and cancer research pioneer Frank McCormick as a spinout from Chiron of Emeryville, California. It was one of the first cancer drug development companies to take a broad view of molecular genetics, using knowledge of genetic mutations in cancer as a guide to develop new therapies, says McCormick, who left Onyx in 1996 to become head of the University of California, San Francisco, Comprehensive Cancer Center. In Onyx's first collaboration, with Bayer HealthCare's predecessor in 1994, the focus was on developing drugs against targets in the oncogenic Ras signaling pathway. Out of that came a blockbuster cancer drug, the multikinase inhibitor Nexavar (sorafenib), for which Onyx shares the profits worldwide, except in Japan.
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