Bristol-Myers Squibb Bets Big on a Mouse
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Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) has placed a very big bet on a mouse. On July 22, the New York pharmaceutical giant announced that it would buy Medarex (MEDX) for $2.4 billion—a 90% premium to its closing share price that day. Medarex's claim to fame is UltiMAb, a mouse with a human immune system, which allows it to produce disease-fighting antibodies in its cells. Those fully-human antibodies can be harvested and turned into experimental drugs.
More than 35 companies have partnered with Medarex on drug-discovery projects. Still, the Princeton (N.J.) company brought in only $52.3 million in revenues from those deals last year, and it lost $38.5 million. It has yet to get any of its own drugs on the market.