CAT and MSM Enter Drug Discovery Collaboration
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Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT) and MSM Protein Technologies (MSM) have announced that they have formed a drug discovery collaboration aimed at developing antibody-based drugs targeting multi-spanning membrane proteins.
The collaboration is a two-year research agreement in which CAT will fund MSM to use its proprietary technology on CAT’s behalf and the two companies will provide each other with access to their respective technology for drug discovery.
Under the terms of the agreement, MSM will apply its proprietary technology and drug discovery techniques to display multi-spanning membrane proteins to select antibodies from CAT libraries against a number of CAT-nominated targets and MSM-nominated targets.
CAT will pay MSM to conduct discovery work on CAT’s behalf and both companies will have obligations to pay milestones and royalties to one another upon the successful commercialisation of any drugs resulting from the collaboration.
Alex Duncan PhD, CAT’s Senior Vice President Discovery, commented, "We view this discovery collaboration with MSM as a particularly important advance in our continuing efforts to increasing the range of technologies that CAT can apply to the development and commercialisation of therapeutic proteins."
"By working with MSM we aim to strengthen our leadership position in this field and expand our expertise in this very exciting area."
"Multi-spanning membrane proteins comprise a major class of drug targets that includes G-protein coupled receptors, ion channels and transporters."
"Together they represent roughly 70% of the targets for therapeutic drugs and are an important class of largely untapped protein targets for therapeutic antibodies."
Davis Farmer, MSM’s Chairman, commented, "The collaboration with CAT is an important step for MSM on several levels and provides an opportunity to generate our own drug candidates as well as those for CAT."
"This relationship with CAT follows a pilot project between CAT and MSM that demonstrated the synergy of our technologies for the successful selection of functional antibodies against multi-spanning membrane proteins, therefore the collaboration also provides a validation for our technology from a leading antibody company."
"We are delighted to announce this relationship and look forward to working with CAT to develop this specific class of therapeutic proteins."
