Similar to development stage in-licensing deals, the terms of the agreement provide for success-based milestones per compound and royalties on the commercialization of drugs repositioned through Gene Logic’s “drug repositioning program”. Full terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Gene Logic’s drug repositioning program seeks to restore stalled drug candidates back into its partners’ clinical development pipelines. Applying a platform of diverse technologies in parallel, Gene Logic’s program evaluates drug candidates for potential utility across a wide spectrum of disease indications.
This platform represents the integration of technologies acquired from Millennium Pharmaceuticals in 2004 with Gene Logic’s capabilities in genomics and in silico biology. Gene Logic can complete initial repositioning testing and analysis in less than a year, potentially returning drug candidates expediently to clinical testing.
“We will be putting Pfizer’s selected drug candidates through a diverse battery of technologies specifically designed for drug repositioning,” said Dr Louis Tartaglia, general manager and senior vice president of Drug Repositioning for Gene Logic. “Data analysis from those studies will provide a comprehensive picture of the drug candidates’ biological activities and determine possible new therapeutic uses for these potential medicines.”