Lexicon in research deals with Xoma and Odyssey

The agreement with Xoma will initially focus on working towards a drug aimed at treating obesity, diabetes and metabolic diseases. Lexicon will select additional targets during the course of the agreement.

The collaboration is designed to combine Lexicon’s target discovery and biotherapeutics capabilities with Xoma’s antibody generation, process development and manufacturing expertise to accelerate the development and commercialization of novel therapeutic antibodies.

Lexicon and Xoma will jointly develop and commercialize novel antibodies directed at these targets and will share the responsibility and costs for research, preclinical, clinical and commercialization activities. Costs and profits will be allocated 65% to Lexicon and 35% to Xoma.

Odyssey will work with Lexicon to characterize the pathway activity of certain Lexicon compounds in human cells using Odyssey’s protein-fragment complementation assay (PCA) strategy which allows pathway activities of compounds to be visualized and quantified directly in living human cells.

Each of hundreds of assays reports on the sub-cellular activity of a compound at a particular node or branch of a biochemical pathway. By testing a compound against a broad panel of distinct assays, both intended and unintended activities can be identified and can be traced to a particular pathway and mechanism of action. Odyssey’s database of known drugs and toxic compounds further informs the process, allowing a comparison of the activity of novel compounds with the activities of marketed and withdrawn agents and toxicants.