This cross border merger and financing is a landmark deal for Asia, confirming the ability of biotechnology companies to develop successfully from Singapore.
The value of the deal was not disclosed but the two European companies become wholly owned subsidiaries of MerLion, a specialist in developing prescription drugs from naturally-occurring compounds. The company, whose headquarters are in Singapore, will maintain anti-infective programmes and nuclear magnetic resonance screening activities in Berlin.
At the same time Merlion announced the first closure at US$ 25 million of a US$ 30 million round of financing, which will be completed by the end of 2006. This funding will lead the company towards an initial public offering within two years.
Private round
The round, led by Aravis Venture of Switzerland and Bio*One Capital Pte Ltd of Singapore, represents one of the largest private rounds of funding raised for a drug discovery and development company in the region.
Combinature Biopharm AG, has developed a "combinatorial biosynthesis" technology platform, which can be used to modify natural products. Using this it has developed a pipeline of preclinical stage products, including a lipopeptide antibiotic for treating hospital-acquired infections that is due to enter Phase I trials later this year.
Similarly, Athelas has developed an anti-infectives discovery platform DiVi, for target generation and drug screening.
Tony Buss, CEO of MerLion said, “The company will continue its lead discovery activities in a range of therapeutic areas and will focus on the clinical development of anti-infective drugs.”
Harald Labischinski, CEO of Combinature Biopharm will become the Chief Scientific Officer of MerLion. He said the merger would allow Combinature’s antibiotic compounds to advance into clinical development. “We expect to start our first clinical programmes with a novel mode of action resistance breaker antibiotic, as well as with a new subclass of a broad spectrum antibiotic class within a few months from now."
Merlion’s current collaboration partners include Abbott Laboratories, Arpida SA, Astellas Pharma Inc., Boehringer Ingelheim, Cancer Research Technologies Ltd, Dow AgroSciences, the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (Singapore), Johns Hopkins (USA), Merck and Co, NovImmmune SA, Nura Inc, Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases, Sankyo Co Ltd. and Schering Plough Inc.
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