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Rigel Acquires Technology From Leading Research Institutions to Advance Genomic Target Discovery Programs

23 Feb 2002 - South San Francisco, Calif. February 21, 2002
 
Rigel Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today announced that the Company has signed agreements with The Pennsylvania State University and Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation to license from these institutions new intellectual property and technology complementary to the Company’s current research and development programs.
 
Rigel has in-licensed the SICLOPPS, or cyclic peptide, technology from Penn State that will help enable the Company to develop intracellular cyclic peptide libraries. Peptide libraries are key sources of diversity for identifying and developing new therapeutics such as peptides or small molecule drugs. Rigel plans to incorporate this technology into its existing functional genomics and target discovery and validation infrastructure.
 
Rigel has also in-licensed the patent estate to the RBX, or ROC1, protein from the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. This protein is an ubiquitin ligase target with potential therapeutic importance in both oncology and inflammatory disease – two areas in which Rigel is already developing product candidates. Ubiquitin ligases comprise a new class of targets with roles in most disease states. Rigel has already initiated high-throughput screening with this ubiquitin ligase target.
 
"We believe that both of these agreements enhance Rigel’s position as a leader in target discovery and development,” said Brian C. Cunningham, Rigel’s president and chief operating officer. "The new ligase intellectual property strengthens our growing leadership in the ubiquitin ligase area, a field that we believe holds tremendous potential as a source for regulating cell function across a variety of disease states.”