Company Gains Access to Proprietary High Through-Put Antibody
Discovery Technology
FREMONT, Calif. and VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Sept. 26 /PRNewswire/ --
Abgenix, Inc. (Nasdaq: ABGX) and ImmGenics, Inc. announced today a definitive
agreement whereby Abgenix will acquire ImmGenics in an all-stock transaction.
The transaction, which is expected to be completed by December 1, 2000, has
been approved by both companies' boards of directors and remains subject to
ImmGenics shareholder approval. Abgenix will exchange approximately
U.S.$77 million (CAN$110 million) of its stock for all ImmGenics shares and
options.
ImmGenics, founded in 1993, has developed a proprietary technology which
can increase both the effectiveness and speed of antibody product discovery
efforts. ImmGenics' technology dramatically increases the number of antibodies
that can be screened for any given antigen target. This breakthrough
technology is expected to allow Abgenix to rapidly select optimal product
candidates from larger pools of antibodies.
"Abgenix is very excited to be adding this powerful technology to our
growing collection of antibody product discovery tools," said R. Scott Greer,
chairman and CEO of Abgenix. "We intend to maintain our technological
leadership in the antibody field with both internal research initiatives and
acquisitions. We also look forward to integrating ImmGenics' high caliber
employee group with the Abgenix team."
"Abgenix, with its industry leading XenoMouse(TM) human antibody technology
and its commitment to enhancing antibody product discovery efforts, is the
ideal partner for ImmGenics," stated Kevin Leslie, Ph.D., ImmGenics' president
and CEO. "We enthusiastically anticipate combining our technology with
Abgenix's antibody product discovery program."
ImmGenics' technology involves screening antibodies directly from
antibody-producing B cells rather than from hybridoma cell lines. This
provides a much larger pool of candidates than are available with traditional
hybridoma technology. ImmGenics' technology provides access to the complete
immune response for the identification of antibodies with the desired
functional properties and highest affinities. Abgenix estimates that this
difference is between 100 and 1000 fold. In addition to providing greater
antibody diversity, eliminating the hybridoma generation step will allow
Abgenix to shorten product development timelines.
"With exclusive access to ImmGenics' technology, Abgenix will be able to
offer unprecedented antibody diversity to specific antigen targets," stated C.
Geoffrey Davis, Ph.D., Abgenix's chief scientific officer. "By scanning the
entire immune repertoire of an immunized XenoMouse, this technology will allow
us to rapidly select the very best fully human antibodies, as defined by
specificity, functional properties and affinity."
At the closing of the transaction, Abgenix will exchange approximately
US$77 million (CAN$110 million) of Abgenix common stock, based on a 5-day
average price, for all outstanding ImmGenics shares and options. For
accounting purposes, the transaction will be treated as a purchase and the
company will incur a significant, yet-to-be-determined, one-time charge in the
fourth quarter, as well as ongoing amortization of goodwill. Operating
expenses for Abgenix are anticipated to increase modestly, by approximately
US$2-3 million annually as a result of this acquisition. Abgenix has a strong
balance sheet including $560 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable
securities at June 30, 2000.
Abgenix is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and
commercialization of antibody therapies for a variety of diseases. The company
developed XenoMouse(TM) technology to enable the rapid generation of high
affinity, fully human antibody product candidates to essentially any disease
target appropriate for antibody therapy. Abgenix uses its XenoMouse technology
to build a large and diversified product portfolio through the establishment
of licensing arrangements with multiple pharmaceutical, biotechnology and
genomics companies and through the development of its own internal proprietary
products. For more information on Abgenix, visit the company's website at
http://www.abgenix.com.
ImmGenics Pharmaceuticals Inc. is a Vancouver-based biotechnology company
that develops and intends to commercialize antibody-based therapeutic and
diagnostic products for the treatment and diagnosis of a wide variety of
diseases, including infectious diseases, cancer and inflammatory and
autoimmune disorders.
In conjunction with this press release, you are invited to listen to a
conference call with R. Scott Greer, CEO of Abgenix; C. Geoffrey Davis, Ph.D.,
Chief Scientific Officer of Abgenix; and Kevin Leslie, Ph.D., CEO of
ImmGenics. The conference call will be held on September 26, 2000 at
2:30 p.m. PST. To join the conference call, dial 800-553-0351 and mention the
"Abgenix Conference Call". For international callers, dial 612-332-0228. An
instant replay of the call will be available by 6:00 p.m. on
September 26, 2000. The replay number is 800-475-6701 for U.S. callers and
320-365-3844 for international callers. The replay access code is 540393.
Statements made in this press release about Abgenix's XenoMouse
technology, product development activities and collaborative arrangements
other than statements of historical fact, are forward looking statements and
are subject to a number of uncertainties that could cause actual results to
differ materially from the statements made, including risks associated with
the success of clinical trials, the progress of research and product
development programs, the regulatory approval process, competitive products,
future capital requirements and the extent and breadth of Abgenix's patent
portfolio. Please see Abgenix's public filings with the Securities and
Exchange Commission for information about risks that may affect Abgenix.
Except for the historical information presented, the matters discussed in
this press release are forward-looking statements that are subject to certain
risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially
from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by
such statements. Such risks and uncertainties include possible delays or
failure by ImmGenics or its partners to develop and/or commercialize any
technology covered by a collaborative agreement or agreements between
ImmGenics and its partner or partners, possible risks related to adverse
clinical results as products including any of such technology move into
clinical trials, the impact of alternative technological advances and
competition on the collaborative relationship between the parties, inherent
risks in early stage development of such technology.
Immgenics Technology Backgrounder
ImmGenics has developed a proprietary technology that enables researchers
to rapidly scan the entire immune repertoire of an immunized animal and to
select the B-cells producing antibodies with the desired functional properties
and the highest affinities in a matter of days. In terms of scope and speed,
the ImmGenics technology represents a significant advance over hybridoma
technology, the standard method for generating monoclonal antibodies as
practiced over the last twenty-five years. By combining this technology with
Abgenix's own XenoMouse technology, a large number of extremely high affinity,
fully human antibodies can be isolated within two to three months following
the first immunization.
Hybridoma Technology
The development of hybridoma technology by Cesar Milstein and
George Kohler in 1975 reshaped our thinking about the prospects of
immunotherapy. Whereas previously patients had been treated with complex,
poorly characterized mixtures of antibodies, usually in the form of horse
serum, hybridoma technology offered the possibility of establishing a single
homogeneous cell line producing a single antibody of a defined specificity
-- a "monoclonal antibody."
The first step in hybridoma technology is to repeatedly inject a mouse
with a target protein, the "antigen." Once the mouse's response has been
determined to be satisfactory, the antibody-producing B-cells are harvested
and are fused with an immortalized myeloma cell line. The resulting immortal
"hybridomas" may number from several hundred to several thousand. This number
of antibody-producing cells, limited by the inefficiency of the fusion
process, represents only a small fraction, on the order of one percent, of all
the antibody-producing B-cells originally in the mouse. While this small
fraction is usually adequate to produce quality antibodies, having access to
the complete immune response may allow identification of rare or special
antibodies with desired properties. For example, Abgenix believes that based
upon ImmGenics' experience with the technology, routine identification of
antibodies with ultra high affinities is possible.
ImmGenics Technology
Advantages over hybridoma technology: A significant advantage of
ImmGenics' technology is that the optimal antibody is selected from millions,
rather than hundreds to thousands, of antibody-producing B-cells derived from
an immunized mouse. This is accomplished by applying techniques for culturing
the B-cells directly, thus bypassing hybridoma technology with its inherent
inefficiency altogether. Using specially developed microplate-based assays,
the B-cells are rapidly assayed over a period of several days. Typically,
thousands of antigen-reactive cell-clones are identified, representing
thousands of individual antigen-specific monoclonal antibodies. The number of
different antigen-reactive monoclonal antibodies identified in a single
experiment is typically increased by 100-fold or more. After applying
additional rapid microplate-based assays to measure and rank antibodies by
affinity and function, individual B-cell clones producing extremely high
quality antibodies can be selected.
Another significant advantage of ImmGenics' technology is that by
bypassing the hybridoma generation step, researchers can move rapidly into a
recombinant manufacturing cell line. Individual B cells selected using the
technology are isolated and the antibody genes can be directly introduced into
a manufacturing cell line. The resulting cell line then can be developed for
clinical trial testing over essentially the same timeline as that required for
hybridoma cell line development.
Advantages over Phage Display Technology: Phage display technology, when
applied to antibodies, also offers the potential of screening large numbers of
antibody clones. However, there are several drawbacks to this approach. First,
since for ethical reasons it is not practical to immunize humans, and the
phage library is derived from human immune tissue, the library is typically
"nonimmune." Therefore, the antibody response cannot be driven toward high
specificity and high affinity and is instead a result of random combinations
and mutagenesis. As a result, the antibodies derived from nonimmune human
antibody phage display libraries are typically of substantially lower affinity
than those derived from immunized donors. The combination of ImmGenics'
technology with XenoMouse provides full access to the repertoire of fully
human antibodies that have been naturally affinity matured in the mouse.
A second disadvantage of phage display is that the original pairing of the
antibody heavy and light chains, both chains of which contribute to the
antibody's binding affinity, is lost in the cloning process, and the
probability of restoring these original pairs is extremely low. As a result,
significant manipulation may be required to achieve affinity levels
appropriate for clinical trials. The combination of ImmGenics' technology and
Abgenix's XenoMouse takes advantage of the natural in vivo affinity maturation
process and the maintenance of the original heavy and light chain pairs.
SOURCE Abgenix, Inc.
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CONTACT:
Kurt Leutzinger, CFO, 510-08-6575, or Ina
Cu-Unjieng, Manager, Investor/Public Relations, 510-608-4662,
both of Abgenix, Inc.
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