New xeno joint venture

URL: http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nbt/journal/v18/n11/full/nbt1100_1128b.html

Nature Biotech, November 2000 Volume 18 Number 11 p 1128 

Karen Birmingham

                  In a final vote of no confidence in its subsidiary Imutran

                  (Cambridge, UK), Novartis has announced plans to merge its

                  xenotransplantation research with that of Boston, MA-based

                  BioTransplant; Imutran will cease operations on 31 December.

                  Imutran has developed a line of GM pigs with 'humanized'

                  organs that express a human complement inhibitor. However,

                  Novartis was unhappy with Imutran's 39-day average survival

                  time of pig-to-monkey heart transplants. Meanwhile,

                  BioTransplant has bred a herd of miniature swine that are

                  relatively free of transmissible PERV. The company has also

                  developed "tolerance induction"—a technique of teaching the

                  body to recognize foreign antigens as its own—and has

                  submitted a patent claim for the creation of hybrid, human-pig

                  pluripotent stem cells for use in therapeutic cloning. Thus,

                  Novartis is hoping that BioTransplant will take

                  xenotransplantation to heights not reached by Imutran, namely

                  clinical trials. Novartis will own two thirds of the new venture and

                  will pump in $30 million over 3 years.