Exelixis buys Artemis in $24 million deal

Exelixis of the USA has signed an agreement to acquire the Germanfunctional genomics group Artemis Pharmaceuticals in a stock deal that is presently valued at approximately $24 million. Exelixis helped form the latter group in 1998 in order to give it access to vertebrate model system technologies, and the two firms say they have worked closely together since that time. The transaction is expected to close by April 30.

Exelixis said that the acquisition is a continuation of its strategy to optimize all aspects of the drug discovery process from target identification to clinical development. The company's chief executive, George Scangos, claimed that the pharmaceutical industry has come to realize the power of identifying and validating targets in living organisms where functional relationships that are too complicated to predict by other methods can be identified. "This has been Exelixis' approach from the beginning," he added.