Glaxo buys heart specialist
UK-based drug giant GlaxoSmithKline Plc, announced this week that it would buy US-drugmaker Reliant in a $1.65 million deal. Reliant, a private-held company, specializes in heart drugs, This is the second big deal this month for Glaxo.
A Reuters article ("Glaxo to buy heart drug firm Reliant", 22/32/07) characterizes the deal as "a move to boost its flagging drug sales in the United States. Europe's biggest pharmaceuticals group has been hit hard in recent months by slumping sales of blockbuster diabetes drug Avandia, following a report linking it to heart-attack risk."
As we've noted before, the inability of major drug companies to innovate has made them eager to buy small competitors. As the Reuters story notes "'big pharma' companies, hungry for promising new products, are often prepared to put a higher value on early-stage firms than stock market investors." In fact, Reliant ways reportedly thinking of an IPO, but figured that the Glaxo offer was more than they could make on the offering.
But Reliant is a special case: it is not primarily a research firms, rather it has been successful in licensing and bringing to market drugs invented by others. The main drug that interest Glaxo is Lovaza, a treatment for high triglycerides that, unique in the market, uses omega-3 fatty acids. Reliant has the right to sell the drug, made by a Norwegian company, in the US. Glaxo expects that it can make this drug into a major product.
2:56:21 PM 
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