Friday, September 26, 2008

CEO: No M&A in Targanta’s plans

By Stephen DeSantis

At a time when many maturing biotechs look to be acquired or have their intellectual property licensed out to larger players, only a handful choose to go the distance. Such is the chosen path of Targanta Therapeutics Corp., according to its CEO, Mark Leuchtenberger. Yet industry observers say success may make the company too tempting a target to resist for big pharma.

“I have been close to the leadership of other development-stage companies who state publicly that they will move through the commercialization portal. Then when you ask them privately, they say they are hoping for the opposite,” said Leuchtenberger. “For us, this really is the goal.”

The Cambridge biotech’s fate rests with one drug, the antibiotic oritavancin developed to treat super bugs like MRSA (or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). Despite its looming Dec. 8 final review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the 3-year-old biotech is not waiting patiently. It is transforming itself from a startup to a commercial biopharmaceutical with anticipated revenue in 2009.

Targanta already has a commercial leadership team, recently hiring sales and marketing executives and a directors of sales training and insurance reimbursement. Targanta’s sales force will come after approval, Leuchtenberger said.

Targanta (Nasdaq: TARG), which went public in October 2007, has found its first chief commercial officer in Mona Haynes, a Biogen Idec Inc. alum like Leuchtenberger. She came from Acusphere Inc. and helped that company take its first products to the market.

Lewis Geffen of the Boston law firm Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo PC, said the company had an advantage from the get go. “They were able to acquire the drug already in late phase, relatively inexpensively. And they had a moderate public offering in a year that was, like this one, really difficult,” Geffen said.

According to Leuchtenberger, it has been a long first-to-market race for Targanta. However, in July, San Francisco-based biotech Theravance Inc. reported delays in getting its MRSA antibiotic approved. Then in September pharma giant Pfizer Inc. withdrew its application for its superbug-killer dalbavancin.

Geffen said M&A deals are good options in this climate, and Targanta would be hard-pressed not to “sell in a heartbeat” given the right suitor.

Leuchtenberger conceded that acquisitions are a reality.

“It’s a possibility that everyone lives with every day. We are going to step up to the plate and swing the bat. If someone takes the bat out of our hands, there isn’t much we can do about that,” Leuchtenberger said.