Under the terms of the agreement, a subsidiary of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) will commence a tender offer to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Genelabs common stock. The board of directors of Genelabs has unanimously recommended that shareholders tender their shares in the offer.
Genelabs will become part of GSK’s drug discovery organization and its hepatitis C virus (HCV) programs will be consolidated into the broad therapeutic approaches already underway internally and through external collaborations.
This strategic acquisition will strengthen GSK’s effort to develop and deliver novel therapies against the HCV. The tender offer is subject to customary conditions and is expected to close in December 2008.
Zhi Hong, senior vice president of the Infectious Diseases Centre for Excellence in drug discovery at GSK, said: “Genelabs has demonstrated a strong track record in HCV drug discovery and identified numerous novel classes of inhibitors that target unprecedented mechanisms in the virus’s life cycle. This arrangement, combined with our other collaborations, will give GSK a broad HCV drug discovery platform addressing novel targets and innovative therapeutic approaches.”