CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- NeoGenesis Pharmaceuticals today announced that it has earned a milestone payment by successfully delivering high quality lead molecules for a difficult target provided by Mitsubishi Pharma. The discovery of lead molecules for this particular target, related to human cardiovascular disease, had proven elusive prior to the application of NeoGenesis' ALIS (Automated Ligand Identification System) screening technology, and its NeoMorph library of millions of drug-like compounds.
NeoGenesis and Mitsubishi originally entered into a partnership in August 2001 to discover small-molecule drug candidates for a high value therapeutic area. Based on the rapid success of NeoGenesis' work, Mitsubishi and NeoGenesis have expanded the collaboration agreement, with NeoGenesis now working to further optimize the lead compounds.
Akihiro Tobe, Ph.D., Managing Executive Officer, Division Manager of Research and Development Division, Mitsubishi Pharma, said, "Our confidence in NeoGenesis' ability to quickly deliver quality leads for a difficult target has been justified. We are very pleased with the initial results of this collaboration, and anticipate that NeoGenesis' continuing work to further optimize the lead compounds will support our efforts to contribute to society through the provision of valuable new medicines."
"We are pleased to have achieved this milestone with the delivery of such high quality lead molecules so quickly," said Zhongli Zheng, Ph.D., vice president of program management of NeoGenesis. "This is a very difficult target, and serves as a good example of the power and speed of our chemical genomics technologies. Our ALIS screening system and our huge NeoMorph library of compounds were keys to being able to discover the leads and keep the Mitsubishi project on track. Under the expanded collaboration agreement, we will quickly advance the lead series toward development candidates."
Based on the delivery of these lead molecules, NeoGenesis earned a "significant" milestone payment, and is still entitled to further milestones in the process of drug development and to royalties after the drug is on the market.
About Mitsubishi Pharma
Effective from October 1, 2001, Welfide Corporation and Mitsubishi-Tokyo Pharmaceuticals, Inc., merged in a new beginning as Mitsubishi Pharma Corporation (Mitsubishi Welpharma Kabushiki Kaisha in Japanese). Combining capabilities in drug discovery and commercialization, sales and marketing, and overseas development, we look forward to serving the global community as Mitsubishi Pharma Corporation in the cause of quality of life for people.
NeoGenesis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a drug discovery company focused on using its chemical genomics strategy to discover small molecule drugs on a genome-wide scale. The company's scalable drug discovery technologies rapidly identify high-quality pre-clinical drug candidates for virtually any disease- associated protein discovered by genomic or proteomics research. NeoGenesis' core technology, the Automated Ligand Identification System (ALIS), is a scalable, generic, affinity-based system for rapidly screening disease- associated targets. This ligand identification strategy does not require any knowledge of protein function or assay development. Coupled with the company's NeoMorph compound library, consisting of more than 10 million diverse medicinally relevant small molecules, ALIS identifies small molecule ligands exhibiting high affinity and high selectivity against many protein classes. By identifying biologically active ligands, NeoGenesis' technologies simultaneously validate a disease-associated protein as a useful drug target and deliver small molecule drug leads, accelerating the drug discovery process. Founded in 1997 and headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, NeoGenesis has developed partnerships and collaborative research agreements with many of the world's leading biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, including: Aventis Pharma, Biogen, Celltech, Immusol, Merck, Mitsubishi Pharma, Oxford GlycoSciences, Pharmacia, Schering-Plough and Tularik.
NeoGenesis Contacts:
David M. Hunter Bill Monigle
V.P. Finance & CFO IR/PR Counsel
NeoGenesis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. For NeoGenesis
Phone: (617) 588-5156 Phone: (603) 424-1184
Note: NeoGenesis, ALIS and NeoMorph are trademarks of NeoGenesis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. |
