Xerion Pharmaceuticals and Arius Research sign colon cancer collaborationOctober 15, 2002Martinsried, Germany and Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA - October 15, 2002Xerion Pharmaceuticals and ARIUS Research Inc. of Canada announced today that they would combine their respective strengths in functional proteomics and antibody discovery to jointly develop products for cancer therapy. Xerion will take four antibodies from ARIUS' functional antibody library and apply its Xstream™ process to evaluate their therapeutic potential in cancer. Under the terms of the agreement, the two companies will share revenues from out-licensed targets, co-develop the targets or pay the other party for an exclusive license to the targets. The agreement follows Xerion's recent target characterization and drug discovery research collaboration with Cambridge Antibody Technology plc to investigate new mechanisms of intervention in allergic disease. Xerion's core technology has been used to functionally validate more than fifty proteins in a disease-relevant biological context. ARIUS contributes functional antibodies generated through its proprietary discovery process. ARIUS has already shown that antibodies in its library can have dramatic anti-cancer properties. Examples include ARVitamab®, which shows anti-metastatic effects in an aggressive model of human lung cancer in addition to controlling tumour size, and two anti-breast cancer antibodies, ARH460-16-2, and ARH460-22-1, which produce almost complete tumour suppression in a model of human breast cancer. "Working in collaboration with ARIUS, we expect to identify high quality novel targets and increase our pipeline of validated targets. This relationship provides us with an additional pathway for developing more therapeutic antibody leads," said Dr. Markus Ewert, President and CEO of Xerion. "Xerion is focused on rapidly turning its discovery efforts into generating viable therapeutic antibodies. We have internally generated therapeutic antibodies against cancer targets for which we intend to initiate pre-clinical studies next year. We look forward to working with ARIUS and to both parties expanding their therapeutic antibody development pipeline in treating cancer." Commenting on the collaboration ARIUS` President and Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. David Young, said: "We are very pleased to be working with Xerion. A target's value can be significantly enhanced by understanding its overall role in disease and Xerion's core strength in target validation will be instrumental in maximizing this value. This deal signals to the investment community that we are meeting our business objectives and executing our business plan. Our efficiency in producing functional antibodies gives us the unique ability to enter into partnerships on multiple fronts for expertise and other resources that complement our set of strengths to rapidly increase the value of our antibody and technologies and meet our financial objectives". Charles Consultants |
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