Mitsubishi buys into tobacco production firm Medicago
pharmafile | July 17, 2013 | News story | Manufacturing and Production | Mitsubishi, Phillip Morris, medicago, tobacco
Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma has bought a majority stake in Canada’s Medicago, a company which specialises in manufacturing vaccines in tobacco leaves.
The Japanese drugmaker said it will pay C$357 million ($343m) to acquire 60% of Quebec-based Medicago, which will effectively become a joint venture between Mitsubishi Tanabe and tobacco giant Philip Morris International which owns the remaining 40 per cent.
Mitsubishi Tanabe has owned a minority share in Medicago since 2011 when it took a 6% stake in the company.
Last year, the two companies entered into a research collaboration aimed at developing at least three new virus-like particle (VLP) vaccines, including a candidate against rotavirus which is a leading cause of severe diarrhoea in infants and kills half a million children every year.
Medicago has developed platform for producing VLPs and antibodies in tobacco plants that can produce vaccine candidates – for example shots against seasonal or pandemic flu – in as little as four weeks following the identification of a particular viral strain. That compares to four to six months for conventional egg or cell culture vaccine development methods.
In May for example, the company said it was the first to develop a vaccine candidate against the H7N9 strain of avian flu, which was responsible for the recent flu outbreak in China that claimed the lives of around 40 people.
Just this week, scientists in the US and Japan published a paper suggesting that H7N9 has pandemic potential as it has been shown to stably infect mammals, which could mean that it becomes more readily transmissible to humans. Meanwhile, there is evidence emerging that the virus is already developing resistance to antivirals such as Roche’s Tamiflu (oseltamivir).
With emerging viruses such as H7N9 and the novel coronavirus (nCoV) making headlines around the world, there has been increasing interest in rapid production techniques that could save countless lives in the event of a pandemic.
Medicago operates a 97,000-sq. ft. production and greenhouse facility in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, that is producing clinical trial materials for the company’s flu vaccine candidates. Its tobacco production platform, called Proficia, is claimed to provide production of VLPs and antibodies at high yields and low cost and with rapid scale-up.
Mitsubishi Tanabe is offering to pay C$1.16 in cash per Medicago share, which represents a premium of 22% on the company’s stock on the day before the announcement. At the time of writing the stock was trading at C$1.15 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Phil Taylor
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