Glaxo takes over cancer drug rights

SEATTLE-based biotech firm Corixa is selling worldwide rights to its Bexxar cancer treatment to GlaxoSmithKline.

Corixa, in which Microsoft boss Bill Gates has a stake, will refocus on immune system drugs.

Bexxar was jointly developed by Glaxo and Corixa and approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2003 as a treatment for a cancer of the immune system called non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

It posted sales of $1.2m last year (£650,000).

After winning FDA approval last year, Corixa set the price of the drug at $27,000 a patient and persuaded Medicare to pay for it, but has been under pressure from shareholders to prove it will sell.

The firm cut 75 research jobs last year to focus on selling Bexxar, but sales have still been slow.

'Corixa continues to believe in the promise of Bexxar and the benefit that it can provide for patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma,' Corixa chairman and chief executive Steven Gillis said in a statement following the Glaxo deal.

'However, Bexxar's commercial acceptance is coming at a pace that is too slow for Corixa to continue to fund.'