It was the beginning of 2002, and employees of Renovis, a biopharmaceutical company based in San Francisco had many reasons to celebrate. They had just received $35 million in financing, and had another $10 million in the bank – enough to last several years. But CEO Corey Goodman was uneasy. The company was focusing its efforts on finding early drug targets and was a long way away from potential revenue, a strategy Goodman could see was quickly becoming unattractive to investors. Goodman knew the company needed to find a way to make money more quickly – and soon. "As good as the science was at Renovis, we needed to change or we were going to fail," he recalls. "We decided we had to go shopping."
When London-based SR Pharma's only product, a biological that showed early promise in treating tuberculosis and cancer, did not produce positive results in Phase III ...
