MorphoSys Announces Expanded Agreement with Centocor
MARTINSRIED, Germany and MUNICH, Germany, March 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- MorphoSys AG (Neuer Markt: MOR), the Munich-based biotechnology company, announced today that Centocor, Inc. exercised an option to expand its existing agreement with the Company. Under the expanded agreement Centocor increased its funded research at MorphoSys and also ordered AutoCAL(TM), the MorphoSys-developed system for automated screening of antibodies, for use in Centocor's research programs.
MorphoSys and Centocor, a member of the Johnson & Johnson family of companies, signed a five-year agreement in December 2000 that focuses on the generation of human antibodies in therapeutic and genomics research applications. Under this agreement, Centocor received an option on up to 30 therapeutic target molecules against which MorphoSys will make optimized fully human antibodies using HuCAL®. MorphoSys also provided Centocor with its HuCAL® antibody library to generate antibodies against various Centocor targets and Expressed Sequence Tags (EST's) in its functional genomics programs.
``The decision by Centocor to expand its agreement and order AutoCAL(TM) speaks to the excellent progress we have made with one of the industry leaders in developing antibody therapeutics,'' said Dr. Simon Moroney, Chief Executive Officer of MorphoSys.
About MorphoSys:
MorphoSys develops and applies innovative technologies for the production of synthetic antibodies, which accelerate drug discovery and target characterization. Founded in 1992, the Company's proprietary Human Combinatorial Antibody Library (HuCAL®) technology is used by researchers worldwide for human antibody generation. The Company currently has licensing and research collaborations with Bayer (Berkeley, California/USA), Biogen Inc. (Cambridge, Massachusetts/USA), Bristol-Myers Squibb (Wilmington, Delaware/USA), Centocor Inc. (Malvern, Pennsylvania/USA), Eos Biotechnology Inc. (San Francisco, California/USA), GPC Biotech AG (Munich/Germany), Hoffmann-La Roche AG (Basel/Switzerland), ImmunoGen Inc. (Cambridge, Massachusetts/USA), Oridis Biomed GmbH (Graz/Austria), ProChon Biotech Ltd. (Rehovot/Israel), Schering AG (Berlin/Germany) and Xoma Ltd. (Berkeley, California/USA). For further information please visit the corporate website at: morphosys.com .
Statements included in this press release which are not historical in nature are intended to be, and are hereby identified as, ``forward-looking statements'' for purposes of the safe harbour provided by Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements may be identified by words including ``anticipates'', ``believes'', ``intends'', ``estimates'', ``expects'' and similar expressions. The company cautions readers that forward-looking statements, including without limitation those relating to the company's future operations and business prospects, are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. Factors that may affect future operations and business prospects include, but are not limited to, clinical and scientific results and developments concerning corporate collaborations and the company's proprietary rights and other factors described in the prospectus relating to the company's recent public offering.
SOURCE: MorphoSys AG |
