Pharming acquires Transgenic Rabbit Models assets and accesses five new product leads

Dutch biotech company Pharming Group (Euronext: PHARM) says that, through the acquisition of certain assets of Transgenic Rabbit Models, a private French company in liquidation, it has gained access to five potential new product leads.

Through acquiring the assets for 0.5 million euros ($667,577), Pharming is able to access leads in the treatment of Pompe’s disease, Fabry’s disease, Gaucher’s disease, hemophilia-A and hemophilia-B, as well as the technology and knowledge of Transgenic Rabbit Models. Pharming plans to start a small research group to optimize these product leads.

Bruno Giannetti, chief operating officer of Pharming, said: “Through this acquisition, we have added two important assets; the capability to create rabbit founders as an addition to our US Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency-validated technology platform, and, at the same time, a number of product leads. The latter means that we will not only be able to strengthen our Factor VIII project with SIPI by adding an additional source of founder rabbits, but also to accelerate, by possibly as much as two years, our ability to develop additional products in therapeutic areas where our technology platform is particularly efficient -the development of treatments for rare genetic and life-threatening diseases such as Pompe’s, Fabry’s and Gaucher’s disease. It is these kinds of diseases that require the complex proteins that continue to pose serious technical and cost challenges to cell based production methods."