Altana Pharma and Atugen renew target validation agreement

Atugen has renewed for a further year its non-exclusive target validation and licence agreement with Altana Pharma, which gives Altana the right to have molecular targets validated by Atugen's discovery team, utilising a number of proprietary knockdown tools and transfection technologies.

Under the agreement, first granted in August 2001, Altana also receives a licence to use Atugen's gene silencing and oligonucleotide delivery technologies. Altana has paid Atugen several research milestones.

Atugen uses a unique target validation approach called CrossValidation, where both siRNA molecules and a powerful third generation antisense technology, GeneBloc, are employed in parallel. This approach is designed to exclude artefacts and nonspecific effects that could arise if either technology were applied alone.

Furthermore, Atugen possesses a set of proprietary liposomal transfection reagents, custom-tailored to individual cell lines, that minimise toxicity while obtaining high transfection rates.

D. Gekeler, head of the department of pharmacology and oncology at Altana, said: 'We have made very interesting discoveries in our research using Atugen's optimised gene silencing technologies. In the past, we had a very fruitful and creative collaboration in various research areas and we are pleased to be able to renew the agreement and have further access to Atugen's technology as it progresses.'