MorphoSys Starts New Antibody Program With Centocor
Tuesday September 6, 2:00 am ET
MARTINSRIED, Germany, Sept. 6, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- MorphoSys AG (Frankfurt: MOR; Prime Standard Segment, TecDAX), today announced that within the scope of its collaboration with Centocor Inc., a Johnson & Johnson company, Centocor has elected a new target molecule involved in immune-mediated and inflammatory diseases, against which MorphoSys will generate antibodies using its proprietary HuCAL GOLD(R) technology. Centocor will carry out pre-clinical and clinical development and subsequent marketing of resulting products. In exchange, MorphoSys stands to receive licensing and milestone payments, in addition to royalties. Financial terms were not disclosed.
In December 2000, MorphoSys and Centocor entered a collaboration to develop fully human antibodies in a wide range of therapeutic indications. This agreement was extended for another three years in December 2004. Within the scope of the collaboration, Centocor has access to HuCAL GOLD(R) for the development of therapeutic antibodies as well as for research purposes. Additionally, Centocor uses AutoCAL(TM), the MorphoSys-developed system for automated screening of the HuCAL(R) antibody library. Since the start of the collaboration MorphoSys has achieved four performance-related milestones to date.
``Today's announcement marks the start of yet another program in our successful collaboration with Centocor,'' commented Dr. Simon Moroney, Chief Executive Officer of MorphoSys AG. ``In this long-standing partnership, scientists from the two companies are building a broad pipeline of HuCAL(R)-based therapeutic antibodies.'' |
