Bayer and CuraGen Enter into Two Landmark Agreements
Bayer and CuraGen Corporation (Nasdaq: CRGN), an integrated genomics-based drug discovery and development company, announced today two landmark biotechnology agreements. The first agreement is a comprehensive alliance to discover, develop, and jointly commercialize small molecule drugs to treat obesity and adult onset diabetes. The second agreement is a broad collaboration to apply CuraGen's functional genomic technologies and pharmacogenomic expertise to evaluate Bayer's developmental and preclinical pipeline of pharmaceutical compounds across all disease areas.
Obesity and Diabetes Alliance to Deliver 12 innovative genomics-derived development candidates
The obesity and diabetes agreement enables each company to leverage the recognized strengths of the other in order to systematically develop breakthrough medications from the human genome. CuraGen is to provide 80 drug targets over the first five years of the collaboration as well as access to its comprehensive suite of functional genomic technologies, bioinformatics and pharmacogenomic expertise to select, prioritize and ensure the resulting drugs are administered to the appropriate patients. Bayer will utilize its high-throughput screening, combinatorial chemistry, medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, and development expertise to develop small molecule compounds against the targets supplied by CuraGen. The Companies also will share expenses related to later stage preclinical and clinical compound development. Bayer and CuraGen have committed to bring 12 candidates in Obesity and Diabetes to clinical development. Both will jointly fund the relevant Research, Development and Commercialization activities up to $1.34 billion over a 15 years period. The research and development costs will be split 56 % to 44 % between both Bayer and CuraGen. Ultimately, the Companies will jointly commercialize drugs resulting from this alliance, and then share profits according to their respective contributions.Curagen has co-promotion rights for drugs commercialized from this alliance.
"We are partnering with the best biotechnology companies in the world thus building one of the most productive research platforms in the global pharmaceutical industry. We expect this collaboration to enhance the development pipeline for our metabolics franchise and bring novel therapies using gene-based targets to patients," said Dr. David Ebsworth, global head of Bayer AG's worldwide pharmaceutical business.
"Bayer expertise in developing small molecule drugs in an industrialized manner is unprecedented in the pharmaceutical industry and is a perfect fit for CuraGen," stated Jonathan M. Rothberg, Ph.D., Founder, Chairman, and CEO of CuraGen Corporation. "CuraGen has an established, high-throughput infrastructure for developing protein, and antibody therapeutics to treat major, unmet medical needs. Through this unprecedented collaboration with Bayer, CuraGen is now able to participate in the development and commercialization of small molecule drugs to treat diabetes and obesity," added Dr. Rothberg.
Pharmacogenomic and Toxicogenomic Collaboration to Improve Drug Development
This expandable, five-year pharmacogenomic and toxicogenomic collaboration is valued at $124 million and includes an $85 million equity investment in CuraGen by Bayer AG and $39 million in committed funding to CuraGen.
By applying genomics to evaluate Bayer's developmental and preclinical pipeline of pharmaceutical compounds early in development, the Companies expect to reduce drug development costs, reduce the time to market, and create safer and more efficacious drugs. In addition to these efforts, the Companies intend to compile a database of gene-based markers and information that will enable scientists to predict potential drug toxicities, understand how a particular drug works, and identify new disease
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