Pfizer pays $620m for Aventis drug

Pfizer agreed to pay $620 million to acquire rights to Aventis’s Campto cancer drug in a transaction to gain antitrust approval for Aventis’s takeover by Sanofi-Synthelabo.

Pfizer already markets Campto in the US.

Aventis, which had Campto sales of €264m last year, sells the drug mainly in Europe, Asia and Africa under license from Yakult Honsha.

Sanofi, which sells the competing drug Eloxatin, is divesting Campto and other products to avoid overlap between its own and Aventis’s treatments and address antitrust concerns.