ARIAD LARGEST START UP DEAL?

Ariad Pharmaceutical, the US biotechnology company, is about to complete the largest startup deal in the history of biotechnology, when the company completes its private placement which is expected to raise $46 million, according to the US magazine Business Week. The deal is considered to be ambitous, and some sceptics say that Ariad is wasting huge cash reserves and could finish by giving the biotechnology industry a bad name.

Ariad is researching "signal transduction" and "protein trafficking" to gain an insight into how to fight such diseases as cystic fibrosis and cancer.