>>SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., May 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Rigel Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: RIGL - News) today announced that Novartis Pharma AG (NYSE: NVS - News) has accepted a drug target from the companies' research collaboration. The acceptance of the target will result in a milestone payment to Rigel. Rigel could receive additional milestone payments for the target as it enters future preclinical research and development at Novartis.
Coincident with the acceptance of this target, Novartis has elected to conclude the research phases of the companies' two initial joint projects in the autoimmunity and transplant rejection areas, after 42 months each, taking effect by February 2003. Novartis had the right under the collaboration agreement to end the research phase on these programs after 24 months or 42 months. Since 1999, when these two programs were initiated, Novartis has contributed $750,000 of research funding to Rigel per quarter per program.
The accepted drug target comes from a research program directed at overcoming autoimmune disorders, an area of medicine in which Novartis specializes. The research is specifically designed to identify proteins involved in the activation of T-cells, a type of white blood cells that play an important role in rejecting foreign tissue in the body. The target that Novartis has accepted has been extensively validated, which means that a great deal of information has been assembled about this component of the immune response and its profile in mediating tissue rejection.
"Rigel's scientists have worked with good results to provide this well-defined, high- quality drug target for one of our priority research areas," said Dr. Jan Devries, head of the Novartis Research Institute Vienna/Austria.
"We believe that the Novartis target is one more example of the utility of our technology and the success of our scientists in consistently meeting research objectives and producing potentially valuable drug targets for our partners as well as for our own discovery efforts," said Donald Payan, M.D., Rigel's Chief Scientific Officer.
Rigel and Novartis will continue to collaborate on two other research programs in the areas of angiogenesis and respiratory disease. These programs are in the target discovery phase. For all four programs with Novartis, Rigel received an upfront payment at the initiation of each program, and Novartis is funding the research during the target discovery and validation phase of each program. Rigel also may receive milestone and royalty payments related to the development and commercialization of any therapeutics, diagnostics or vaccines that result from the collaboration. Novartis retains worldwide rights to develop and market these products.<<
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Cheers, Tuck |
