ASTRAZENECA TO BUY CAMBRIDGE ANTIBODY TECHNOLOGIES

UK- and Sweden-based AstraZeneca plans to buy Cambridge Antibody Technologies for approximately $1.3 billion, the company reported. AstraZeneca will offer $24.98 per share for Cambridge.

Together, the companies will work to expand AstraZeneca's pipeline of biological therapeutics -- specifically respiratory, anti-inflammatory, neurological, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal and oncology medications.

"It is our intention to both expand and broaden the scope of our discovery and development pipeline and we expect that, by 2010, up to a quarter of our candidates for full scale development will be biological therapeutic agents," said David Brennan, CEO of AstraZeneca.