Date: 2011-01-03
Type of information: R&D agreement
Compound: optimization of homing peptides
Company: Mercator Therapeutics (USA) Pepscan Therapeutics (The Netherlands)
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology
Type agreement: R&D
Action mechanism:
Disease: tumors
Details: Mercator Therapeutics, the first biopharmaceutical company to systematically use in vivo phage display technology to develop novel cancer drugs and Pepscan Therapeutics, a world leader in protein mimicry technologies for improved therapeutic peptides and anti-GPCR antibodies, have announced a multi-program research collaboration. The companies will collaborate to optimize Mercator’s ‘Homing Peptides’ using Pepscan’s proprietary CLIPS technology.
Mercator’s Homing Peptides are discovered through a unique in vivo screening process, including screening in consenting end-stage cancer patients. These peptides have been demonstrated in vivo to bind to receptors that are highly expressed on human tumors and induce internalization of both the peptide and the receptor. Pepscan’s CLIPS technology will be applied to improve the potency and stability of peptides by locking the peptides into the biologically active conformation.
Financial terms: Under the terms of the Research and License Agreement between Mercator and Pepscan, Pepscan will increase the potency and stability of Mercator’s Homing Peptides and license to Mercator the associated intellectual property rights. Mercator will pay Pepscan undisclosed research funding, milestones, and royalties in connection with the development of optimized Homing Peptides and the development and commercialization of PDC products that couple optimized Homing Peptides with tumor-killing payloads.
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