boston

The agricultural and pharmaceutical company Monsanto last week signed a research agreement with the genomics company Millennium Pharmaceuticals that is being hailed as one of the largest deals in the field of genomics.

Millennium will transfer its proprietary technologies in genomics, gene sequencing and bioinformatics to a new subsidiary formed by Monsanto for developing plant and agricultural products.

The subsidiary, which is expected to recruit at least 100 scientists during 1998, will be located near Millennium's headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Monsanto, which produces agricultural products, food ingredients and pharmaceuticals, is based in St Louis, Missouri.

The agreement will also provide Monsanto with non-exclusive rights to Millennium's genetics process technology for research in other areas of life sciences, including pharmaceuticals and nutrition.

Millennium, in turn, will receive $118 million in advance and an additional $100 million over the next five years if mutually agreed research objectives are realized. The company's vice-president of business development, Alan Crane, calls the deal “the biggest partnership we've entered into and our first relationship outside human health care”. Millennium has already entered into collaborations with nine other corporate partners including Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Hoffmann-La Roche and Pfizer.

Monsanto is interested in pursuing several agricultural applications through the deal, including the introduction of new herbicides and pesticides, the development of genetically engineered plants and seeds, and the application of genomics tools to the process of “directed breeding”.

Monsanto's president, Hendrik Verfaillie, says Millennium's “broad, integrated technology platform” will “greatly increase the speed and precision with which we can analyze new product leads”.

The partnership fits in well with Millennium's strategic mission. According to Crane, the companies “share a similar vision of the potential of technologies like genomics to revolutionize the life sciences”.

• Sequana Therapeutics, the gene discovery company based in San Diego, California, announced on Monday that its stock has been acquired by Arris Pharmaceutical Corporation in a deal said to be worth approximately $166 million. The new company, which will bridge the range from genomics to clinical application, will operate under the name of AxyS Pharmaceuticals.