The first agreement between the companies was announced in November 2002 and focused on drug targets for immunological diseases. This new agreement expands the collaboration scope and will include drug targets discovered in other disease areas of interest.
Under terms of this new agreement, Medarex will acquire the exclusive rights to develop and commercialize monoclonal antibody therapeutics against the collaboration targets. Medarex also receives a first right of negotiation for use of these targets in small molecule drug discovery and as protein therapeutics.
In return, Cytos Biotechnology will receive an upfront payment, and has the opportunity to earn license fees, milestones, and royalties on net sales of products that are successfully brought to market. Cytos Biotechnology also retains rights to develop and commercialize the target proteins discovered for its own Immunodrugs.