Novartis expands ‘antibody alliance’

Novartis has expanded its agreement with MorphoSys, a German antibody research company.

The agreement extends the two companies’ alliance to 2011, after MorphoSys delivered its first therapeutic antibody programme to Novartis in August 2005, over a year after the original collaboration was agreed.

Novartis will agree to increase funding in MorphoSys’ research and development in order to increase the number of antibody projects produced annually, in exchange for more access to MorphoSys’ HuCAL Gold technologies. HuCAL is an antibody library containing some ten billion unique human antibody samples, allowing “rapid and automated” production for research purposes.

Although the new deal offers MorphoSys increased annual licence fees, commercial fees, research and development milestones and royalties remain unchanged from the terms of the original agreement.

Dr Simon Moroney, chief executive officer of MorphoSys, remarked: “We are very pleased to announce an expansion of our largest and our most productive collaboration to date.”

“Expanding our existing collaborations is a cornerstone of our strategy and we have been very successful in this regard. The extended agreement provides a higher number of therapeutic antibody programs to be pursued in the years to come,” he added.

Last month, MorphoSys signed a deal with Schering-Plough to develop antibodies for ten disease-related targets. In addition to Schering-Plough and Novartis, the company has agreements with Boehringer Ingelheim, Merck Sharp and Dohme, and both Bayer and Schering AG – soon to be merged as Bayer Schering.

The Schering-Plough deal is MorphoSys’ 12th with a top-20 pharmaceutical company.

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