Healthcare company EiRx Therapeutics has taken a majority stake in a Scottish business in a €2.2 million deal.
The Cork-based firm, which develops treatments for cancer and other serious illnesses, said yesterday that it had bought 56.1 per cent of Auvation, a Scottish business operating in the same field.
In a statement, the Irish company said it had agreed to pay £1.5 million (€2.17 million) in EiRx shares for the stake.
It will issue 25.2 million shares, valued at 6 pence each, to Auvation's shareholders. It has offered to buy out the remaining 43.9 per cent for the same price.
University College Cork (UCC) professor of biochemistry Dr Tom Cotter founded EiRx in 1999. The company floated on London's Alternative Investment Market (AIM) last year.
It has focused on researching possible treatments for cancer and other serious illnesses that work by regulating "cell death". Unlike healthy cells, cancer cells do not die.
The treatments that EiRx is developing allow cancers to be treated without posing a threat to the patient's healthy cells, which is a side-effect of other methods of tackling the illness.
Last year, it agreed a collaboration with US company, OSI Pharmaceuticals, which has agreed to pay it a total of $18.8 million (€14.4 million) in licensing fees.
Auvation is engaged in work in the same area and is based in Aberdeen in north-east Scotland. Before the EiRx purchase, its biggest shareholders were chief executive Dr William Melvin and business development manager Dr Colin Telfer. Both will join the EiRx board.
A number of EiRx directors will join the Auvation board. In the year to the end of August 2003, Auvation's net assets were £84,047 and it made a profit of £79,047.
