Eisai/MGI Pharma ($3.4 billion)
Announced: December 2007
Like Japanese rival Takeda, Eisai is looking for a bigger footprint in the United States. The company started by co-marketing Alzheimer drug Aricept with Pfizer in the late 1990s, but with its patent set to expire in 2010, the drug maker is looking for new ways to stay in the world's biggest drug market.
MGI was founded as an agricultural biotechnology shop in 1979, but switched to human drugs in the late 1980s. It has developed drugs for the side of effects of cancer treatments, like chemotherapy-causing dry mouth and nausea. Eisai hopes MGI will help it build on its own oncology division, which has developed drugs targeted at leukemia and lymphoma.
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Last updated September 08 2008: 10:23 AM ET
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