Millennium keeps cool head amid acquisition heat

By Toni Clarke

BOSTON (Reuters) - Biotechnology company Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc MLNM.O said on Thursday that it won't be as aggressive as some of its rivals when it comes to bidding for experimental new drugs.

At a time of massive price inflation for promising new products, Millennium, which makes cancer drug Velcade, says it has a mandate from its shareholders to do deals if it can, but not at any price.

"One of our strategies is to look outside to accelerate growth," said Deborah Dunsire, Millennium's chief executive, at the Reuters Health Summit in New York. "But our larger shareholders want us to stay religiously focused on being able to return value after we've paid for the assets."

Last year, Millennium entered a bidding war with biotechnology company Genzyme Corp (GENZ.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) for AnorMED Inc of Canada. Millennium dropped out of the bidding and Genzyme paid $580 million for an experimental blood cancer product that some analysts did not consider worth the price.

Millennium, while looking for potential acquisitions, is mainly focused on its pipeline of experimental products and on partnerships for some of them.

Dunsire said the company has talked to several potential partners about MLN1202, its experimental antibody designed to reduce C-reactive protein, which evidence suggests may be associated with a greater risk atherosclerosis, a leading cause of coronary artery disease.

So far there is no proof that elevated C-reactive protein directly contributes to an increased risk of heart disease, which means the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would not approve it just because it reduces the protein, Dunsire said.

But other companies involved in developing drugs for cardiovascular disease could find it a very valuable tool and potentially a product in its own right.

"We have taken this forward to determine whether it is an interesting avenue to explore," she said. "Treating atherosclerosis is not central to our strategy, but a lot of companies are evaluating the drug from lots of different perspectives."

In the meantime, the company is pushing ahead with expanding sales of Velcade, which competes with Celgene Inc's (CELG.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) drugs for multiple myeloma. It is testing Velcade in multiple combinations and a standard of care will eventually emerge that may consist of many drugs, Dunsire said.

"We're very optimistic we'll get good growth in 2008," she said. "We've never looked at this as a zero-sum game."

(For summit blog: summitnotebook.reuters.com/)