Cellzome Announces Second Major Strategic Drug Discovery Alliance with GlaxoSmithKline in Inflammatory Disease
Collaboration Exploits Cellzome's World-Leading Proteomics Technology in Epigenetics
CAMBRIDGE, England and HEIDELBERG, Germany, March 10,
2010/PRNewswire/ -- Cellzome today announced that it has formed a
second strategic alliance with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). This new
collaboration gives GSK exclusive access to Cellzome's proprietary
Episphere(TM) technology in the emerging field of epigenetics as
applied to immunoinflammatory disease. Epigenetic mechanisms play a
key role in controlling immune cell differentiation and
inflammatory gene expression during an excessive inflammatory
response.
Under the terms of the agreement, the companies will work
together using Cellzome's Episphere(TM) technology platform, to
identify selective small-molecule drug candidates against targets
from four different epigenetic target classes. The companies will
share operational responsibility for the programs until
identification of drug candidates, at which stage GSK will assume
responsibility for any further preclinical and clinical development
and commercialisation.
Under the financial terms, Cellzome will receive an upfront
payment of EUR33 million, comprising technology access fees and the
purchase of equity. In addition, Cellzome is eligible for milestone
payments and tiered royalties for each programme. Milestone
payments under this collaboration could reach over EUR475 million
if all programmes under the alliance are successfully developed and
commercialised.
Tim Edwards, Chief Executive Officer of Cellzome, said: "We are
delighted to form another major alliance with GSK, using our
leading technology and people to find transformative medicines in
this exciting field of biology. Combining forces with GSK will
accelerate the development of new anti-inflammatory drugs for the
benefit of patients."
About Cellzome
Cellzome is a privately-owned drug discovery and development
company, and a leader in the use of chemical proteomics
technologies to identify a new generation of drug candidates for
the treatment of inflammatory diseases.
Our pipeline of small-molecule therapeutics is driven by
Kinobeads(TM), a proprietary technology for screening and profiling
kinases in their physiological context. We have developed a new
technology, called Episphere(TM) to address epigenetic targets in
disease-specific protein complexes. Our goal is to identify oral
therapeutics for inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid
arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and inflammatory bowel
disease.
In addition to the alliance with GSK in the field of
epigenetics, Cellzome has another strategic alliance with GSK to
discover, develop and market kinase-targeted therapeutics to treat
inflammatory disease and an alliance with Johnson & Johnson
focused on the discovery of novel medicines for the treatment of
Alzheimer's disease.
Cellzome's holding company is domiciled in the US and it employs
about 90 people at its two R&D laboratories in Cambridge, UK
and Heidelberg, Germany. To learn more about Cellzome, please visit
the website: http://www.cellzome.com.
About Episphere(TM) and epigenetics
Episphere(TM) is a chemical proteomics technology for the
discovery of novel drugs directed against targets involved in
epigenetic regulation. The technology allows the screening and
profiling of inhibitors of epigenetic targets in their native
environment, directly in the lysate of cells and tissues and can
also differentiate between the complexes these targets operate in.
The term epigenetics refers to heritable changes in gene expression
and phenotype caused by mechanisms other than changes in DNA
sequence. One major mechanism is the specific enzymatic
modification of histone tails, which affects the packaging of DNA
into chromatin and through that controls the transcription of
specific genes. Enzymes, such as histone deacetylases (HDAC) or
methyltransferases (HMT) can change the modification of the histone
tails and therefore change the 'histone code'. Dysregulation of
these modifications is thought to play a central role in cancer and
in chronic degenerative diseases like neurological and autoimmune
disease. The enzymes which carry out these histone modifications
are part of large multifunctional protein complexes, which
represent attractive novel targets for drug discovery.
Source: Cellzome
For more information please contact: Cellzome: Tim Edwards,
Chief Executive Officer, Tel: +49(0)6221-137-57-100,
press@cellzome.com; Media contact: Hogarth Partnership, Sarah
MacLeod, Tel: +44(0)207-357-9477
Posted: March 2010
