Under the agreement, Critical Outcome Technologies (COTI) will retain intellectual property ownership of its drug candidates, including any data resulting from preclinical experiments. COTI will manage the synthetic chemistry process associated with these select drug candidates with a third party contractor. The cost associated with synthesis will be shared between the two parties.
Upon completion of synthesis, the major pharmaceutical company will manage, conduct and fund agreed upon preliminary preclinical experiments as part of its evaluation of COTI’s compounds.
Once the final experiments have been completed and the results have been received by COTI, the major pharmaceutical company will have an exclusive time period to negotiate a licensing agreement with COTI for the select compounds. If an agreement is not reached within this period, COTI will be able to engage other potential partners for its HIV-1 integrase inhibitor program.
John Drake, chairman and CEO of COTI, said: “This is a strategic, cost effective initiative that allows us to rapidly advance our HIV-1 integrase inhibitor program. It also provides the opportunity to further validate our innovative drug discovery technology Chemsas, which allows us to identify novel optimized, high-potential lead compounds in three to five months.
“It is our strategy to form partnerships early in our development process and it is our hope that this project marks the beginning of a successful, long-term relationship.”