ARN-509 Acquired by J&J

The acquisition includes Aragon's androgen receptor antagonist program. Aragon's lead product candidate is a second generation androgen receptor signaling inhibitor, ARN-509, in Phase 2 development for castration resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). Still recruiting in Phase II.
www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-17/j-j-to-buy-aragon-pharmaceuticals-for-cancer-candidate.html

Ziggy, sorry about the other cancer. Stock analysts I read thought ARN-509 might be in clinical trials till 2016.

Interesting case of selling out to competitors, since Medviation owns MDV3100 (Xtandi), assumingly they owned ARN-509 both were co-invented by Dr. Sawyers and work similarly enough. Since Johnson & Johnson just bought the rights to it is interesting stuff. I would guess that Xtandi is not going to be trumped by ARN-509 (only a zufus conjecture, based upon s.w.a.g.), otherwise why sell it to a competitor. But if you know it is not any better or maybe a little inferior and the price tag is sweet enough, perhaps selling out is financially wonderful stuff. Who wouldn't want to own a drug that costs maybe $7,350 a month for pills and thousands of people might need to buy to hopefully live a little longer??? Then again there might be someone who puts people and options above profits, although this is getting rare in our lovefest culture.

Sawyers helped invent both of those and he did state in a blog thingy, that he thought ARN-509 would bind better than MDV3100 (go figure). Perhaps Sawyers got a huge paycheck for letting his invention out. When big money is at hand, some real nice sharks are known to be swimming around. As always I am skeptical of the love motivations in our culture.