April 5 /PRNewswire Interactive Release/
LION bioscience AG (Nasdaq: LEON; Neuer Markt: LIO, WKN 504 350) announced today that it has identified 250 targets for Bayer AG (Dax: BAY) after only 22 months, half of the agreed time frame, putting the partnership 20 months ahead of schedule. Additionally, over 250 patents have been filed, 150 targets have been progressed into future development and one target has moved into pre-clinical development.
Under terms of the agreement, LION will receive royalties on drugs developed with gene targets identified and validated. This progress demonstrates a clear improvement in discovery efficiency through the application of LION's integrated knowledge management solution i-biology® and confirms the potency of LION's solutions for Life Science research under competitive conditions.
``We are pleased that LION has exceeded our expectations in the delivery of therapeutic targets,'' said Prof. Wolfgang Hartwig, Executive Vice President of International Pharma Research at Bayer, and Chairman of the company's Life Science Research Committee. ``Our partnership with LION has significantly increased our number of targets which we can now proceed into the next steps. Together with the targets from our other partners this will increase our output performance and cost efficiency while reducing our overall target-to-development cycle time.''
The five-year collaboration with Bayer AG was initiated in 1999 for the establishment of an information technology-based (IT) knowledge management system and its application for in silico identification and validation of new drug targets, gene expression markers and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The collaboration was valued at $100 million and included the formation of a new research subsidiary, LION bioscience Research, Inc.
In October 2000 this i-biology® collaboration was extended into the field of pharmacophore informatics, pioneering the link between biology and chemistry, to identify the relevant biological and chemical structural elements responsible for the success of a compound derived from the increasing amounts of structures that are being delivered by today's numerous high-throughput systems.
``We are proud to have provided Bayer with 250 targets in nearly half the agreed time,'' said Dr. Friedrich von Bohlen, CEO of LION bioscience AG. ``At the same time, we have built a worldwide R&D information management system to support and integrate its global discovery activities. The success of partners like Bayer further establishes our solutions as the standard for integrated information and knowledge management in the Life Sciences Industry.''... |
