Astellas and MerLion Pharmaceuticals announce new drug discovery agreement

05-Oct-2005

Astellas Pharma Inc. and MerLion Pharmaceuticals Pte Ltd of Singapore announced the signature of a collaborative agreement to discover and develop new drug candidates derived from natural products chemistry.

Under the collaboration agreement, MerLion will receive a pipeline of validated drug targets from the Astellas portfolio and will utilise its extensive natural sample collection, its modern high throughput screening facilities and experienced natural products chemistry skills for the identification of new chemical seeds. Astellas will conduct the optimisation of such novel compounds and generate drug candidates for future development.

Successful drug candidates will be subject to agreed licensing terms in return for milestone and royalty payments. Further details of the financial terms are not disclosed.

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