Medarex and ZYCOS Establish Alliance to Develop CANVAS(TM) Targets into Human Antibody Therapeutics
PRINCETON, N.J. and LEXINGTON, Mass., Jan. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Medarex, Inc. (Nasdaq: MEDX - news) and ZYCOS Inc., a privately held biotechnology company, announced today a collaboration agreement to co-develop novel antibody therapeutic products. The companies expect to utilize Medarex's UltiMAb Human Antibody Development System(SM) to generate antibodies against targets derived from ZYCOS' CANVAS(TM), the company's proprietary protein expression screening technology.
Under the terms of the agreement, Medarex and ZYCOS expect to share the cost of research, development and commercialization and resulting revenues from successful antibody products.
``We are pleased to team up with an inventive company like ZYCOS,'' said Donald L. Drakeman, President and CEO of Medarex. ``We expect ZYCOS' high throughput approach to proteomics and its protein discovery program to yield novel antibody targets for important diseases.''
``Working in collaboration with Medarex, we expect to diversify our pipeline and quickly turn discoveries from our CANVAS proteomic efforts into viable therapeutic antibodies,'' commented Mark A. Philip, President & CEO of ZYCOS Inc. ``ZYCOS is focused on exploiting its technology platform to rapidly develop novel products. Using our own proprietary technologies, ZYCOS has already developed several product candidates, two of which are in clinical development.''
About ZYCOS Inc.
A privately held company located in Lexington, Massachusetts, ZYCOS' core technology platform has led to the development of a new category of therapeutic medicines targeting cancer, viral infections and autoimmune disease. The technology platform is comprised of a proprietary DNA expression vector to encode disease-specific genes and complementary biocompatible polymer systems for targeted drug delivery. ZYCOS' drug discovery capabilities include the CANVAS(TM) protein expression profiling and EPIQUEST® antigen discovery systems. ZYCOS' CANVAS technology is a novel way to characterize the protein expression patterns of mammalian cells. CANVAS screens protein fragments from human tissue or cell samples using proprietary protein and peptide HPLC separations and automated mass spectrometry (MS/MS) analyses. CANVAS enables the detection of rare and low abundance proteins and increases the throughput of screening proteins for potential therapeutic targets. Both the CANVAS and EPIQUEST systems are based on advanced microchemistries and mass spectrometry. For rapid drug development, ZYCOS has developed the BIOTOPE® DNA expression vector and GENCAP(TM) DNA delivery system. ZYCOS is using its technologies to discover novel protein and antigen targets for therapeutic development and to build a pipeline of DNA-based products that are designed to enhance the body's natural response against specific diseases. ZYCOS' first product candidate, ZYC101a is designed to treat diseases associated with the human papillomavirus and is currently in Phase 2b clinical studies for cervical dysplasia. ZYC300, a product candidate designed to treat a variety of cancers is expected to enter Phase 1/2a clinical studies this year... |
