Shire Pharmaceuticals’ proposed $1.6 billion dollar takeover of Transkaryotic Therapies moved closer to becoming a reality yesterday after TKT said that two acquisition-related review periods had expired.

Specifically, TKT said that the 30-day waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 expired last Friday. The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s ten-day period for reviewing the company’s preliminary proxy statement relating to the stockholder meeting to approve the proposed acquisition has also expired. TKT has not yet set a meeting date for the stockholder meeting to approve the acquisition.

Shire and TKT signed on the dotted line late in April in a deal that is expected to “significantly enhance” the UK company’s medium- and long-term product sales and earnings per share growth [[22/04/05d]]. The transaction is expected to close during the third quarter of the year.

- Meanwhile, Shire’s share price posted good gains on the stock markets yesterday, helped in part by the progress on the TKT deal, but also by an analyst’s note, which said that TKT would be publishing the results from a Phase III clinical study into Hunter syndrome some time during the coming three weeks. According to Reuters, previous Phase I and II data were promising, and the market is widely expecting the same from these latest set of results.