Cambridge Antibody Technology and Immunex Corporation Enter Into New Alliance for Human Monoclonal Antibody Co-Development
Collaboration Will Focus on Development of Novel Antibody-Based Anti-Inflammatory Drugs
MELBOURN, England and SEATTLE, May 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Cambridge Antibody Technology (LSE: CAT) and Immunex Corporation (Nasdaq: IMNX - news) announce a broad product development collaboration committed to the joint discovery, development, marketing and sale of human antibody-based therapeutics for autoimmune and inflammatory disorders.
Under the terms of the agreement, the two companies will share equal responsibility for all research and development, and split equally any potential profits generated by product sales. Immunex will contribute two undisclosed proprietary targets, scientific and development expertise to the partnership, while CAT will contribute its proprietary human antibody phage display technology and high throughput screening capabilities to identify human antibodies. CAT will have primary responsibility for the discovery and optimisation of human antibodies specific to the Immunex targets. Immunex will be primarily responsible for additional pre-clinical evaluation, clinical trials and product commercialisation.
Dr. David Chiswell, CEO of CAT, said, ``We are extremely pleased to be expanding our relationship with Immunex for the custom design and development of human antibody drugs. It is a further demonstration of CAT's commitment to share in the risks and rewards of antibody product development and to build a drug pipeline serving areas of significant unmet medical need.''
Douglas Williams, PhD, Immunex Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, said, ``This new collaboration with CAT underscores our commitment to rapidly develop antibody based therapeutics to our validated proprietary targets. This agreement allows us to work with the skilled scientists and systems at CAT and to accelerate the development timelines on two important drug targets.''
In November 2000, Immunex and CAT announced that Immunex received a licence from CAT to utilise its antibody library for reagent generation and target validation. Under that agreement, Immunex will also receive up to eight exclusive product options derived from its in house use of the CAT library and CAT would potentially receive clinical milestones and royalty payments on sales... |
