Millennium Pharmaceuticals Forms Strategic Alliances with Abbott Laboratories and Roche Diagnostics

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Millennium Pharmaceuticals Forms Strategic Alliances with Abbott Laboratories and Roche Diagnostics

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On March 12, 2001, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: MLMN) and Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT-news) announced that the companies had entered into an exclusive alliance to jointly discover, develop and commercialize drugs and molecular diagnostics for the treatment and management of obesity and diabetes. Under the terms of the collaboration agreement between the two companies, Millennium and Abbott will combine their existing genomics, drug discovery and development platforms for obesity and diabetes to establish a metabolic drug development program. Millennium and Abbott will also use the genomic and molecular discoveries of the joint research program for the development of diagnostic and pharmacogenomic products for metabolic disease. In connection with the collaboration, Abbott will purchase a total $250 million of Millennium common stock. A $50 million stock purchase was made at the time of closing and the remaining $200 million in purchases will be completed over the next two years.

On January 8, 2001, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc., together with its wholly owned subsidiary Millennium Predictive Medicine, Inc., and Roche Diagnostics GmbH, a division of the Roche Group (Swiss Exchange: ROCZ.S), announced that they had entered into a collaborative research agreement that will focus on the development of diagnostic products for rheumatoid arthritis. The research will apply Millennium's advanced proteomics technologies and represents an expansion of Millennium's DiagnomicTM product development and personalized medicine initiatives into the area of rheumatoid arthritis. For Roche, the alliance provides an opportunity to further strengthen its proteomics research program to develop novel diagnostics. Under the terms of the three-year alliance, Roche obtains certain research and development rights to select diagnostic markers and related intellectual property developed by Millennium in the area of rheumatoid arthritis and Millennium receives a licensing fee, funding for research, milestone payments and royalties. Diagnostic products resulting from the alliance will be brought to market by Roche.

Hale and Dorr's Life Sciences Group served as counsel to Millennium in the negotiation of both agreements.

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