GPC, Agennix get $20M to fuel merger

Germany's GPC Biotech AG and Houston-based Agennix are planning to merge their oncology pipelines. In the deal, GPC is being merged into a new company which will have all of Agennix's shares along with 15 million euros--$20 million--injected by an investment company belonging to Dietmar Hopp, who has extensive biotech holdings.

The merger of their two pipelines will add Agennix's late-stage cancer drug talactoferrin. And shareholders will get a chance to vote on the merger in the first half of this year. The key investor in this deal is Hopp, a wealthy German with a keen interest in drug development. His investment group, dievini Hopp Biotech, is providing the $20 million to complete the deal.

"Dievini focuses its investments on creating and building entrepreneurial and sustainable biotech organizations to foster the development of innovative new treatments for patients," says GPC CEO Bernd Seizinger. "This philosophy fits well with out goals for the new company."

The company will have three sites in Munich, Princeton, NJ and Houston.

- check out the press release

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