Iconix Announces Collaboration Agreement with Lilly

Iconix Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has announced that it entered into a research and license agreement with Eli Lilly and Company.

Iconix will receive compensation from Lilly in exchange for access to Iconix's DrugMatrix^® chemogenomics system and its Drug Signatures^® library.

DrugMatrix is a reference source of information on the genomic effects of drug and chemical treatments.

To date, Iconix scientists have analyzed DrugMatrix to discover over 300 Drug Signatures - sets of genes that serve as genomic biomarkers for the prediction of the potential toxicological, mechanistic, and side effect properties of a pre-clinical drug candidate.

Lilly will use Iconix's chemogenomics technology in efforts to better prioritize and select candidate drug molecules and to improve Lilly's understanding of the safety and mechanistic profiles of proprietary compounds prior to and during pre-clinical development, and also during clinical development.

The research collaboration calls for the addition of new compounds and tissues to DrugMatrix in several key areas resulting in a database with greater depth and breadth, and additional Drug Signatures for these new chemistry and tissue domains.

Additionally, as part of the agreement, Lilly will integrate its in-house toxicogenomics data with that in Iconix's DrugMatrix.

"Over the past several years, toxicogenomics has been growing in importance as a critical tool for discovery," said Jim Neal, CEO, Iconix Pharmaceuticals.

"Lilly's commitment to Iconix and its technology is further recognition of the value of the DrugMatrix system as a means to screen drug candidate safety and to prioritize compounds for development."

"We see this as a key step in the adoption of chemogenomics by the wider pharmaceutical industry."

This relationship is similar in scope to the collaborations Iconix entered into with Bristol-Myers Squibb and Abbott, both in January 2004.