Oxford Genome Sciences Announces New Therapeutic Antibody Deal With Medarex
Sep 18, 2007 09:58:00 (ET)
OXFORD, September 18, 2007 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- - New Agreement to Drive the Development of OGeS' own Pipeline of Antibodies in Cancer
Oxford Genome Sciences (UK) Ltd (OGeS) today announced a second partnering agreement with Medarex, Inc. This new agreement provides OGeS with broad access to Medarex's fully human antibody technology and will potentially enable OGeS to accelerate the development of its own pipeline of novel fully human antibodies in the field of cancer.
Under the terms of the agreement, OGeS will license Medarex's proprietary transgenic mouse technology to generate antibody therapeutics against cancer targets that OGeS identifies using its unique OGAP(R) database. OGeS will retain full worldwide rights to the new human antibodies generated, and Medarex has the right to receive license fees, milestone payments and royalties on commercial sales of any products that may result from this agreement. Further financial details were not disclosed.
Medarex's technology offers the potential for drug developers to generate high affinity fully human antibodies. OGeS will be able to potentially build a valuable and broad therapeutic antibodies pipeline by combining Medarex's technology with its OGAP database, which enables the identification of best in class targets,
In parallel, to further accelerate its pipeline development, OGeS has established a three-way agreement with Biosite Incorporated (Biosite) and Medarex. Medarex will provide access to its transgenic technology to Biosite, and Biosite will carry out the early stage antibody generation on behalf of OGeS for a potentially large number of OGeS' antibody programs. This is partly in exchange for Biosite receiving access to the OGeS diagnostic targets in colorectal and ovarian cancer. This arrangement is expected to improve OGeS' productivity to put top quality antibody therapeutic programs into development more quickly.
In addition, under a separate agreement between OGeS and Biosite, Biosite can also establish a companion diagnostic assay on certain programs selected by Biosite and OGeS. This provides OGeS with the opportunity to create a significant portfolio of personalised cancer therapeutics with companion diagnostics for many of its oncology targets.
Dr. Christian Rohlff, CEO of OGeS said: "Today's announcement is an important step in OGeS' transition from target discovery to product development potentially allowing us establish our own pipeline of antibodies in cancer based on the leading expertise of world leading antibody companies. Not only does it highlight OGeS' ability to leverage our existing partnerships with both Medarex and Biosite but also reinforces our strategy to fully exploit the commercial opportunity of our unique ability to discover new valuable targets based on our OGAP(R) database. We are now well positioned to develop our own antibody therapeutics with companion diagnostics in a very efficient and productive way, thereby establishing ourselves as a major player in the field of personalised antibody medicines."
This new agreement builds upon a collaboration between OGeS and Medarex, which was initiated in May 2006, for the discovery, development and commercialization of antibody therapeutics on a 50:50 basis. This initial joint collaboration has already led to a number of promising discovery programs which are now at various stages of preclinical research.
About Oxford Genome Sciences
Oxford Genome Sciences (OGeS) is focused on the development of targeted medicines for oncology. The company uses OGAP(R), which it has developed into the world's largest cancer protein database, to discover novel clinically relevant drug targets and diagnostics.
OGeS' strategy is to use its unique and integrated OGAP(R) discovery platform in alliances with the world's leading antibody companies to develop OGeS targets into new antibody therapeutics and diagnostics that will deliver innovative and cost-effective medicines to fulfil unmet patient needs in the field of cancer. The company has signed a number of collaborations in the area of cancer, which are together designed to achieve OGeS' objective of developing novel personalised solutions to the management of cancer. Specifically in 2006, OGeS entered into partnerships with Medarex to discover, develop and commercialise new human antibody therapeutics for the treatment of cancers and with Biosite to develop a new diagnostic protein panel for relapsing colorectal cancer. In parallel, OGeS provides biomarker discovery and screening services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
OGeS, a privately held company, was formed in 2004 and is based near Oxford, UK.
About OGAP(R)
Oxford Genome Anatomy Project (OGAP) holds the world's largest proprietary collection of proteins represented by the database, which contains over one million peptide sequences from 50 tissues and 60 disease states, mapped to approximately 15,000 genes and over eight million SNPs and haplotypes. The database can be customised for individual partners to support and enhance their preclinical and clinical drug development activities.
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