The collaboration is designed to combine Lexicon’s target discovery and biotherapeutics capabilities with Organon’s clinical development, biologics manufacturing and commercialization franchise to accelerate the development of novel therapeutic antibodies and secreted proteins.
This signing signifies Lexicon’s fourth major drug discovery alliance for which the company will receive an upfront payment of $22.5 million from Organon in exchange for access to drug target discovery capabilities and the exclusive right to co-develop biotherapeutic products.
Organon will also provide annual research funding totaling up to $50 million to Lexicon for Organon’s 50% share of the collaboration’s costs during the four-year target function discovery portion of the alliance.
The collaboration will begin with the selection of up to 300 genes that encode secreted proteins or potential antibody targets. Lexicon will create and analyze mouse knockouts of each of the 300 genes to identify promising human drug targets.
Organon and Lexicon will jointly select targets for further research and development and will equally share costs and responsibility for research, preclinical and clinical activities.
“Our companies will gain a strategic advantage by combining Lexicon’s powerful target discovery engine with Organon’s drug development and commercialization experience and manufacturing capability to move rapidly from gene function discovery to marketed therapeutic products,” said Dr Arthur Sands, president and CEO of Lexicon. “We expect a robust pipeline of new antibody drugs and protein therapeutics to result from the combined efforts of our discovery and development teams.”