Eisai Announces Completion of Acquisition of Morphotek

04-18-2007: Eisai Co., Ltd. and Eisai Corporation of North America announced the completion of Eisai's acquisition of Morphotek® Inc. after having cleared the approval process by the government authorities including the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. The expense for this transaction was US $325 million after excess net cash. Morphotek, based in Exton, Pennsylvania, will continue to be headed by Dr. Nicholas Nicolaides, as President.

Oncology is one of the Eisai's focused areas per defined in the company's 5th mid-term global business plan, the "Dramatic Leap Plan". Eisai currently has an extensive global oncology research program for discovering small molecule anti-cancer agents. This acquisition enables the expansion of Eisai's capabilities into the biologic therapeutics field, with which Eisai will make further contributions to fulfilling a variety of unmet medical needs. In addition, the expansion of Eisai's research & development capability complements the company's establishment of its oncology sales and marketing operations in the U.S.