Roche starts acquisition process of ARIUS to gain access to new screening platform for antibody...

WEBWIRE – Friday, July 25, 2008 Roche and ARIUS Research Inc. today announced that the two companies have signed a definitive agreement for Roche to acquire ARIUS in an all-cash transaction at a price of approximately C$191 million. ARIUS is the developer of a proprietary antibody platform called FunctionFIRST, which rapidly identifies and selects antibodies based on their functional ability to affect disease before progressing into clinical development. The FunctionFIRST platform will allow Roche to further strengthen its developmental portfolio, initially within the areas of oncology and inflammatory diseases where this new technique offers potentially broad therapeutic applications. “ARIUS’ promising platform and early pipeline of new antibody candidates represent an excellent fit with our own progressing research in the... [read full story]