Novartis grabs chiron

Swiss-based drug maker Novartis has offered to buy out California vaccine manufacturer Chiron for US$4.5 billion.

The bid was made as the US Food and Drug Administration said it thought Chiron was making “significant progress” in addressing problems at its production plant in Liverpool, UK. Chiron stock has been depressed since UK regulators ordered it to cease production in Liverpool of its flu vaccine, Fluvirin, last October.

Analysts say that Novartis is moving to procure Chiron at a bargain price at a time when concerns about a global flu epidemic could boost the vaccine company's prospects.

Novartis already owns 42% of Chiron; it will buy the rest if its offer is accepted by most other shareholders.

Cloud over satellites

Even as hurricane Katrina devastated the southern United States, industry officials admitted that a major weather satellite programme is running two years late and billions of dollars over budget.

Officials at Northrop Grumman in Los Angeles, the defence contractor that is building the satellites for the Department of Defense, told a conference in California that delays were due to problems with integrating many different types of sensor into the satellites.

The programme is now expected to be functional in 2010 at the earliest and to cost much more than the original estimate of $4.5 billion.

Nanotech in medicine

Sales of medical products and equipment that use nanotechnology will grow strongly, a market research firm says — but perhaps not by enough to support the flood of activity in the sector.

Frost & Sullivan predicts that the world nanobiotechnology market — basically the use of nanoscale materials and devices for drug delivery, tissue reconstruction and other medical applications — will grow from US$750 million last year to about $2 billion by 2011.

But the company warns that too many players are joining the field and that regulatory obstacles could make it hard for nanotech-based products to compete.