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The scale of the transaction is miniscule when set against Abbott's recent €4.5 billion ($6.2 billion) acquisition of Brussels, Belgium–based Solvay Pharmaceuticals or its $6.9 billion purchase of Ludwigshafen, Germany–based Knoll Pharmaceuticals in 2000. The latter deal, which gave it ownership of Humira (adalimumab), has paid off handsomely: the tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) inhibitor racked up around $5.5 billion in sales last year. The Facet purchase even appears relatively modest compared with the $170 million—plus another potential $20 million in milestones—Abbott lavished on a single phase 1 antibody, a nerve-growth-factor inhibitor called PG110, which it acquired from PanGenetics, of Utrecht, The Netherlands, last year.
Nevertheless, Abbott's $27 per share offer substantially trumped the $17.50 offered by Facet's development partner Biogen Idec, of Cambridge, Massachusetts. In return, Abbott is getting partial ownership of a clinical pipeline, for which Biogen Idec and New York–based Bristol-Myers Squibb also have substantial claims, plus a set of protein engineering capabilities for optimizing antibody performance (see Table 1). It is not, however, getting its hands on a portfolio of lucrative antibody humanization patents held by PDL BioPharma, of Fremont, California, which spun out Redwood City, California–based Facet in December 2008. Whether Abbott's investors have obtained good value for their money remains for now an open question (see Box 1).