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Gene Genies
CuraGen completes one deal, forges another
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Business New Haven
10/16/2000
By: Michael C. Bingham
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NEW HAVEN - In a span of just 48 hours earlier this month, CuraGen Corp. of New Haven announced two deals that company officials expected would accelerate its ability to discover new drug targets and ultimately get important genomics-based drug therapies to market.
On October 10, CuraGen officials announced they had formalized a drug-discovery collaboration with the UK-based Gemini Genomics, PLC (NASDAQ: GMNI), a clinical genomics company. Gemini would employ CuraGen's PathCalling proteomic technology in order more rapidly to identify the biological context of disease-associated genes.
According to a joint announcement, Gemini will identify genes associated with common chronic human diseases using its clinical genetics approach. CuraGen's PathCalling technology will be employed to help identify important disease-related pathways and illuminate complex networks of protein-protein interactions.
“Because Gemini focuses on human clinical information, we can establish medically relevant links between particular genes, or subsets of genes, and susceptibility to common human diseases,” said Gemini CEO Paul Kelly.
“However, once disease-associated genes have been identified, it is essential to establish their biological context in order to better understand the disease itself and intelligently approach the identification, selection and validation of appropriate new targets for drug discovery,” Kelly added.
Just one day earlier, CuraGen officials announced that the company had licensed five drug targets to Biogen Inc., a longtime CuraGen collaborator based in Boston. This announcement marks the completion of the research portion of the pair's discovery collaboration.
Under terms of the agreement, CuraGen is entitled to receive potential milestone payments as the targets move through clinical trials, and royalty payments if the targets become marketed drugs.
“Biogen was one of CuraGen's earliest collaborators and together we have made a number of discoveries, including the licensed drug targets,” explained CuraGen Executive Vice President Christopher K. McLeod.
“We are now looking forward to realizing the fruits of our research efforts, as Biogen advances our joint discoveries through the drug-development process,” McLeod added.
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