Novartis, BioTransplant Set Up Xenotransplant Firm

BASEL, Switzerland

(Reuters) - Swiss health care group Novartis AG and U.S.-based BioTransplanthave agreed to set up a new company that will research xenotransplantation, Novartis said in a statement on Tuesday.

Xenotransplantation is the controversial science of transferring cells, tissues and organs from one species to another. It has made media headlines primarily due to its attempts to use pig organs in humans amid a shortage of donor organs from other people.

Novartis said the field "has the potential to provide a lifeline for thousands of people waiting for an organ transplant, many of whom will die before an organ becomes available."

Novartis shares were down two Swiss francs to 2,668 around 1405 GMT in a weaker Swiss market. BioTransplant shares were up 50 cents at $14.

Novartis will own 67 percent of the company and BioTransplant 33 percent. The Boston-based firm will start operations on January 1, 2001. BioTransplant Chief Scientific Officer Julia Greenstein will head the new company.

A separate Novartis unit, Imutran Ltd, will also be wrapped into the new company as the partners combine their individual expertise.

Novartis will get the rights to commercialisation of research from the new company, while BioTransplant will get royalty payments from Novartis sales.

Greenstein said that her company and Novartis had been examining different but complementary ways of overcoming the problem of recipients'rejecting transplants.

"The combination of Novartis's expertise in immunosupression and transgenic pigs with BioTransplant's tolerance induction programme and inbred miniature swine will provide a leading platform on which to further develop this potentially life-saving technology," she said.

Novartis's research chief, Paul Herrling, said the move to join forces made sense. "By joining the two approaches, we hope to bring forward the day when xenotransplantation will become a clinical reality," he said.

BioTransplant will continue to work independently on tolerance reduction in allotransplantation, the statement said.

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Copyright © 2000 At Home Corporation.

This article posted October 1, 2000.