Genomic technology pays off: Bayer and Millennium expand research program

New therapeutic areas are thrombosis, urinary incontinence and prostate hyperplasia

20-Sep-2001

Bayer and Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, Massachusetts, have decided to expand their highly successful research alliance. Work will now also focus on the identification of important new drug targets relevant to thrombosis, urinary incontinence and benign prostatic hypertrophy.

The alliance, which began in September 1998, involves the use of gene analyses to find new active substances for the indications cardiovascular disease, cancer, pain, hematology, thrombosis, viral infections and urological diseases. The scientists have identified more than 140 disease-relevant targets to date, and many of these have moved into assay development and high-throughput screening. Six lead compounds have been identified so far, the first of which is scheduled to enter clinical testing soon.

Over the past three years, the Bayer-Millennium collaboration has been a leader in industrializing the drug discovery process, demonstrating that genomics is a successful approach to the discovery and development of innovative drugs. Millennium has optimized modern large-scale genomics technologies for target identification. The companies jointly develop novel assay systems that allow for the application of Bayer's ultra high-throughput screening technology, which is capable of testing more than 200,000 substances each day on one machine.

"The alliance has been extraordinarily successful. Our current success rate for developing targets into lead structures makes us optimistic that we will reach our goal of 30 development candidates," said Professor Wolfgang Hartwig, Executive Vice President of Pharmaceuticals Research at Bayer. "Our three-year cooperation has proven that genomic technologies are a successful method of finding new lead structures. That's why we've decided to include the new indications thrombosis and urological diseases in our research program."

These newly integrated indications carry a great demand for effective medications. According to the American Thrombosis Association, thrombotic events are the leading cause of death in the Western world, killing more than 600,000 Americans each year. More than 12 million people worldwide suffer from urinary incontinence, and more than half of all men over age 60 have benign prostatic hypertrophy, an enlarged prostate that is not cancerous.

"The success of this alliance is based on perfect interaction between the two companies," said Millennium CEO Mark Levin. "The synergistic strengths of our alliance with Bayer are truly industrializing the drug discovery and development process. We fully expect that our joint efforts will build a robust pipeline for both companies containing important new drug candidates that could be used to combat not just the symptoms, but also the causes of major human diseases."

In return for total payments of up to $ 465 million over a five-year period, Bayer receives access to key technologies in modern genome research and a flow of new genomics-based targets for drug development.

https://www.chemeurope.com/en/news/4790/genomic-technology-pays-off-bayer-and-millennium-expand-research-program.html