Anadys and Roche expand collaboration

Anadys Pharmaceuticals has entered into a new drug discovery collaboration with Roche. The two companies began a partnership in August 2002 that utilised Anadys' drug discovery capabilities to advance lead compounds against a Roche oncology program. This agreement was expanded in October 2003.

Under the new agreement, Anadys will engage its drug discovery capabilities, including medicinal chemistry, structure-based drug design, cheminformatics and biology to advance lead compounds against an additional undisclosed Roche program. Financial terms of the collaboration were not disclosed, but include R&D funding, and potential milestone and royalty payments to Anadys.

'Since 2002, we have worked closely with Anadys,' said Dr Jonathan Knowles, Roche's president of global research. 'We are very pleased by the progress we have made in this partnership and we are now expanding the relationship to include other therapeutic areas.'

'We welcome the opportunity to build on our relationship with Roche in a new therapeutic area while further validating our drug discovery capabilities,' said Dr Kleanthis Xanthopoulos, Anadys' president and chief executive officer. 'With our expertise in medicinal chemistry and structure-based drug design, we continue to demonstrate our ability to rapidly move quality compounds from the discovery stage into preclinical development.'