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news.In an effort to ensure continued investment in its developmental treatments, Cambridge Antibody Technology has said that it has dropped plans to achieve profitability by 2008.
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In a financial update for the first six months of its fiscal year, the UK biotech firm stated that its previous articulated goal of achieving profitability by 2008 was no longer in shareholders’ interests. CAT stated that such a strategy would “severely limit the company’s capacity to invest in the opportunities available to it over the next five years.”
For the six months ended March 31 2005, CAT recorded a loss after taxation of GBP16.3 million, compared to a loss of GBP18 million for its previous six month period. The figures do not include payments made by Abbott Laboratories following a legal dispute over royalties for arthritis drug Humira. Although Abbott paid CAT almost $24 million in January, the UK biotech firm will not book the revenue until Abbott’s official appeal is heard.
CAT believes that, following the example set by its alliance with AstraZeneca, all its drug development programs, excluding later stage product development, will become self-financing within three years. This is designed to ensure that its business is effectively self-funding up until the demonstration of efficacy in clinical trials. This strategy should enable CAT to continue to pursue its own carefully targeted proprietary discovery programs.