Swiss/US tie-up
Swiss firm Cytos Biotechnology and US biotech company Medarex have expanded the scope of their collaborative research, development and licence agreement for new drug targets.
Swiss firm Cytos Biotechnology and US biotech company Medarex have expanded the scope of their collaborative research, development and licence agreement for new drug targets.
The first agreement between the companies was announced in November 2002 and focused on drug targets for immunological diseases. This new agreement expands the collaboration scope and will include drug targets discovered in other disease areas of interest.
Under terms of this new agreement, Medarex will acquire the exclusive rights to develop and commercialise monoclonal antibody therapeutics against the collaboration targets. Medarex also receives a first right of negotiation for use of these targets in small molecule drug discovery and as protein therapeutics. In return, Cytos Biotechnology will receive an upfront payment, and has the opportunity to earn license fees, milestones, and royalties on net sales of products that are successfully brought to market. Cytos Biotechnology also retains rights to develop and commercialise the target proteins discovered for its own Immunodrugs.
The identification of disease-relevant drug targets is a key first step in successful drug development. While the human genome sequence has been completed, the formidable task of understanding the function of the proteins encoded by the genes is underway. Cytos Biotechnology's protein discovery technology DELphi aims at representative production of the proteins encoded by the human genome in a functionally active form and has led to discovery of several disease proteins of potential relevance in major chronic diseases, such as atherosclerosis. By integrating high throughput screening and functional genomics, the parties believe that DELphi offers Cytos Biotechnology's partners a competitive edge in the race for new drug targets.
'This new agreement gives us the opportunity to expand our work with Cytos Biotechnology by accessing a broader range of disease targets discovered by the DELphi technology,' said Donald Drakeman, president and ceo of Medarex.
Mark Dyer, executive vp, business development of Cytos Biotechnology, comments: 'The expanded agreement enables both companies to benefit from the drug targets that we jointly discover through their use in generating Medarex monoclonal antibodies and Cytos Biotechnology Immunodrugs.'