Chiron and XOMA Form Collaboration For Development and Commercialization Of Therapeutic Antibodies For Cancer
Agreement Leverages Companies' Strengths in Oncology, Antibody Discovery and Product Development
EMERYVILLE, Calif., and BERKELEY, Calif. Chiron Corporation and XOMA Ltd. announced a worldwide, exclusive, multi-product, collaborative agreement for the development and commercialization of antibody products for the treatment of cancer. Under the terms of the agreement, the companies will jointly research, develop, and commercialize multiple antibody product candidates.
"This agreement represents an important milestone in the growth of Chiron's oncology franchise," said Craig Wheeler, president, Chiron BioPharmaceuticals. "Our research engine has successfully identified a number of potential targets, and we believe that XOMA is a great partner for helping us to generate antibodies against those targets and accelerate advancing them through the development process. Our collaboration will help Chiron further build on the capabilities of our BioPharmaceuticals management team, as the company continues to invest in attractive opportunities for value creation."
"Our new collaboration with Chiron represents significant growth in our product pipeline in the cancer arena and also demonstrates the value of the work XOMA has done in building multiple capabilities and experience in biopharmaceutical development, especially in the monoclonal antibody field," said John L. Castello, XOMA's Chief Executive Officer, President and Chairman. "We are excited about joining with Chiron and view this collaboration as a way for both companies to maximize their strengths. It also takes advantage of the breadth of capabilities that we've built up, ranging from phage display and our proprietary Human Engineering(TM) technologies, through process development and manufacturing scale-up, to preclinical, clinical and regulatory capabilities."
Under the agreement, the companies will share development and commercialization expenses, including preclinical and clinical development, manufacturing, and worldwide marketing costs, as well as revenues, generally on a 70-30 basis, with Chiron's share being 70% and XOMA's share being 30%. XOMA will receive an initial payment of $10 million and a loan facility of up to $50 million to fund its share of development expenses. The collaboration will initially focus on preclinical, process development and scale up work, with a potential Investigative New Drug (IND) filing anticipated early on in the collaboration.
Chiron and XOMA's Anti-cancer and Antibody Development Expertise
Chiron has developed a large-scale genomics platform focused on generating novel, functionally validated targets for the development of small molecule drugs, therapeutic antibodies and vaccines. In the area of cancer, the platform has been used to study thousands of human tissues samples from patients with cancer in an effort to identify the most important genes responsible for the development of the disease. As a result, the company has filed patents on approximately 25,000 gene sequences and hundreds of differentially express sequences that may have use in developing new, selective therapies for cancer. CHIR258, the company's first small molecule oncology compound, entered Phase I testing in January 2004.
XOMA's substantial experience and broad-based capabilities in monoclonal antibody generation and development enable the rapid advancement of candidate molecules into the clinic. In addition, the company has bolstered its antibody development capabilities with the addition of multiple phage display libraries that may be used in the current collaboration to generate high quality, fully human monoclonal antibodies as novel cancer therapeutics.
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