Centocor will carry out preclinical and clinical development and subsequent marketing of resulting products. In exchange, MorphoSys stands to receive licensing and milestone payments, in addition to royalties, although specific financial terms have not been disclosed.
This is the latest project to be embarked upon in the collaboration between MorphoSys and Centocor, which began in December 2000, to develop fully human antibodies in a wide range of therapeutic indications.
This agreement was extended for another three years in December 2004. Within the scope of the collaboration, Centocor has access to MorphoSys’ proprietary technology, HuCAL GOLD, for the development of therapeutic antibodies as well as for research purposes.
Additionally, Centocor uses AutoCAL, the MorphoSys-developed system for automated screening of the HuCAL antibody library. Since the start of the collaboration, MorphoSys has achieved four performance-related milestones to date.
“Today’s announcement marks the start of yet another program in our successful collaboration with Centocor,” commented Dr Simon Moroney, CEO of MorphoSys. “In this long-standing partnership, scientists from the two companies are building a broad pipeline of HuCAL-based therapeutic antibodies.”