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Published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on July 12, 2000. All rights

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Cytogen Buys Advanced Magnetics

E-mail: BarbaraFox@princetoninfo.com

Advanced Magnetics has a product with great potential, and Cytogen

Corp. has the sales force to sell it. So Cytogen announced on Monday,

July 10, it will pay $60 million in stock for Advanced

Magnetics, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

It seems like a good match. Advanced Magnetics, which develops and

manufactures MRI contrast agents useful for cancer and liver disease,

also has a manufacturing facility and an R&D fund of $19.5 million.

Cytogen, based on College Road, needs R&D money and could use

manufacturing space, but it has a full marketing team selling similar

products to the radiologists.

The real attraction, however, is Advanced Magnetics’ hot new product,

an imaging agent that makes cancer in lymph nodes visible, and this

product has been deemed approvable by the FDA. "Most people don’t

know that the first place cancer spreads to is the lymph nodes.

Instead of taking a biopsy, you can give an injection and 24 hours

later take a picture," says Richard Krawiec, Cytogen’s vice

president of investor relations. Two similar Advanced Magnetics

products are on the market, one for liver lesions and one for bowel

problems, and more are in the pipeline.

"Until now Advanced Magnetics had been licensing their products,

but now they have a product that could be used by 800,000 people a

year," says Krawiec, noting that to license such a revenue

producer would be like giving away the store. "We have a sales

force synergistic to what they are doing."

Advanced Magnetics has 35 employees, most at a manufacturing facility

in Cambridge, but 10 are at the clinical and regulatory affairs office

at the Carnegie Center.