Genmab and Paradigm Therapeutics Announce Major Alliance on Discovery Targets For Human Antibody Therapeutics
COPENHAGEN, Denmark, April 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Genmab A/S (CSE: GEN and Neuer Markt: GE9D) and the privately owned Cambridge, UK based Paradigm Therapeutics Ltd. today announced the formation of a broad-based collaboration to develop new antibody therapeutic products. The partnership will utilize novel commercially promising disease targets discovered in Paradigm's research combined with Genmab's fully human antibody technology to create and develop new products.
The alliance will cover a broad range of disease areas including cancer and inflammatory diseases. The collaboration brings together Paradigm's sophisticated combination of bioinformatics and functional biology - with Genmab's broad antibody development capabilities and extensive array of pre-clinical tools to generate and characterize fully human antibodies. Genmab and Paradigm will collaborate on the research, development and commercialization of the new antibody products and will share development costs and revenues generated from out-licensing or sales of these products. The diseases covered by the alliance include many of the most common and devastating afflictions in the US, Europe and around the world.
``We are immensely pleased to have signed this deal with Paradigm, which continues our strategy of maintaining a broad pipeline of products,'' said Lisa N. Drakeman, Ph.D., Genmab's Chief Executive Officer. ``Our partnering strategy helps Genmab move into position as one of the industry leaders in developing urgently needed antibody treatments for patients.''
``Paradigm has established a powerful biological platform to define the potential clinical utility of large numbers of novel human drugable gene targets and is now ideally positioned to start the development of drugs to these targets,'' said Dr. Richard Goodfellow, Commercial Director at Paradigm. ``The short development time for monoclonal antibody drugs offers Paradigm the opportunity to start clinical trials on antibody products directed against Paradigm's targets within 2 years or less - a considerably shorter development period than for small molecule drugs. We are therefore delighted to have forged an alliance with Genmab, to exploit the huge potential for generating exciting monoclonal antibody therapeutic drugs to Paradigm's targets.''
About Genmab
Genmab A/S is a biotechnology company that creates and develops fully human antibodies for the treatment of life-threatening and debilitating diseases. Genmab has numerous products in development to treat cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory conditions, and intends to assemble a broad portfolio of new therapeutic products arising from research into the human genome. At present, Genmab's commercial opportunities are based upon research conducted at leading international companies, including Roche, Immunex Corporation, Oxford GlycoSciences Ltd., Medarex, Inc., deCODE Genetics, Scancell, Ltd., Sequenom, Inc., Eos Biotechnology Inc., Glaucus Proteomics B.V. and Bionomics, as well as in its own laboratories. A broad alliance provides Genmab with access to Medarex Inc.'s array of proprietary technologies, including the UltiMAb(TM) platform for the rapid creation and development of fully human antibodies to virtually any disease target. For more information about Genmab, visit www.genmab.com.
About Paradigm Therapeutics
Paradigm Therapeutics Ltd. is a privately held functional genomics company based in Cambridge in the UK, dedicated to the discovery and validation of novel human drug targets. The company focuses on the discovery of genes encoding drugable proteins integrated with in vivo mammalian validation through expression and gene knockout analysis. This powerful genetics based biological research engine reveals the functional utility of new therapeutic targets thereby generating a strong patent position. The Paradigm team has already identified over 300 potential human drugable gene targets of which over 100 are in its genetics program. These novel validated targets will serve as a platform for the discovery and development of new drugs and diagnostics. (For more information visit the Paradigm web site: paradigm-therapeutics.co.uk). |
