Pfizer adds to its portfolio with Coley acquisition

NEW YORK Pfizer announced Friday that it is fattening up its portfolio.

The pharma giant entered into an agreement to acquire Coley Pharmaceutical Group, a publicly-held biopharmaceutical company specializing in drugs and vaccines which are designed to designed to fight cancers, allergy and asthma disorders, and autoimmune diseases.

Under the terms of the agreement, Pfizer will make a cash tender offer for all of the outstanding common stock of Coley for $8.00 per share, representing an enterprise value of $164 million.

Shareholders holding approximately 27 percent of the Coley shares have entered into agreements to tender their shares in the offer.

“This acquisition is an important component of Pfizer’s vaccine strategy and reflects our commitment to research new and more effective vaccines to prevent infectious diseases and to treat cancers and other debilitating conditions,” said Jeffrey Kindler, Pfizer's chairman and chief executive officer. “Coley’s innovative product candidate portfolio and technology have the potential to significantly enhance future vaccine and immunotherapeutic approaches to a broad range of diseases including Alzheimer’s, asthma, infectious disease and oncology, where we already have strong collaborative research in place.”

Coley is a pioneer in developing drug candidates known as TLR Therapeutics, which work by stimulating or blocking important immune system receptors, called Toll-like receptors, which, in turn, direct the immune system to fight disease.

Coley has discovered proprietary clinical stage drug candidates targeting TLRs 7, 8 and 9.

The acquisition is expected to close early in 2008.