Organon and Lexicon Genetics Collaborate to Develop Biotherapeutic Drugs
Tuesday May 17, 2:30 am ET
OSS, Netherlands; THE WOODLANDS, Texas, May 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Lexicon Genetics Incorporated (Nasdaq: LEXG - News) and Organon, the human healthcare business of Akzo Nobel (Nasdaq: AKZOY - News), announced the formation of a collaboration to jointly discover, develop and commercialize novel biotherapeutics. The collaboration is designed to combine Lexicon's target discovery and biotherapeutics capabilities with Organon's clinical development, biologics manufacturing and commercialization franchise to accelerate the development of novel therapeutic antibodies and secreted proteins.
"This collaboration, in conjunction with the establishment of our new biotechnology research center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, reinforces the strong commitment at Organon to research and development and alliances to expand our biopharmaceutical franchise into other areas, including immunology," stated David Nicholson, executive vice-president global research at Organon. "Lexicon's leadership in novel target discovery complements our own biotechnology research and development capabilities and should provide both of our companies with a new generation of drugs."
Organon and Lexicon will initiate the collaboration by selecting up to 300 genes that encode secreted proteins or potential antibody targets. Lexicon will create and analyze mouse knockouts of each of the 300 genes to identify promising human drug targets. Organon and Lexicon will jointly select targets for further research and development and will equally share costs and responsibility for research, preclinical and clinical activities. Organon and Lexicon will together determine how best to commercialize collaboration products and will equally benefit from product revenue. Organon will have principal responsibility for the manufacturing of biotherapeutic products resulting from the collaboration for use in clinical trials and for worldwide sales.
Lexicon will provide two of its advanced drug discovery programs for inclusion in the collaboration. Lexicon will receive an upfront payment of $22.5 million from Organon in exchange for access to Lexicon's drug target discovery capabilities and the exclusive right to co-develop biotherapeutic products that modulate the 300 genes selected for the collaboration, including the two existing drug discovery programs. Organon will also provide annual research funding totaling up to $50 million to Lexicon for Organon's 50% share of the collaboration's costs during the four-year target function discovery portion of the alliance.
"Our companies will gain a strategic advantage by combining Lexicon's powerful target discovery engine with Organon's drug development and commercialization experience and manufacturing capability to move rapidly from gene function discovery to marketed therapeutic products," said Arthur T. Sands, M.D., Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of Lexicon. "We expect a robust pipeline of new antibody drugs and protein therapeutics to result from the combined efforts of our discovery and development teams."
Lexicon Conference Call:
Dr. Arthur T. Sands, president and chief executive officer of Lexicon, and Julia P. Gregory, Lexicon's executive vice president, corporate development and its chief financial officer, will host a conference call to discuss this collaboration at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time today, Tuesday, May 17, 2005.
The dial-in number for the conference call is 800-753-0420 (within the United States) or 913-981-5554 (international). The pass code for all callers is 5427843. Investors can access lexicon-genetics.com to listen to a live webcast of the call. The webcast will be archived and available for review on Lexicon's website through May 25, 2005.
About Organon
Organon -- with shared head offices in Roseland, New Jersey, U.S.A. and Oss, The Netherlands -- creates, manufactures and markets prescription medicines that improve the health and quality of human life. Through a combination of independent growth and business partnerships, Organon strives to remain or become one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in each of its core therapeutic fields: reproductive medicine, psychiatry and anesthesia. Organon products are sold in over 100 countries, of which more than 60 have an Organon subsidiary. Organon is the human health care business unit of Akzo Nobel. Additional information about Organon is available through its corporate website, organon.com .... |
