GENova to sign extensive collaboration agreement with Beckpharma

Sep 17 2009

GENova Biotherapeutics Inc. ("GENova"), a biotechnology company that develops novel therapeutic proteins that disrupt the advance of life-threatening cancers, today announced it is in final negotiations with Beckpharma Ltd. ("Beckpharma") -a pharmaceutical development company also involved in cancer treatments for an extensive collaboration agreement.

The two companies are presently preparing the contractual details of their collaboration, with the mutual goal of bringing their respective drug patents to market as expeditiously as possible.

"Beckpharma's strength lies in identifying and acquiring promising cancer treatments through the relationships it has built with academic research institutions around the world," said Aaron Whiteman, CEO for GENova. "Their expertise and experience in that area would be a welcome enhancement to GENova's current sourcing efforts."

Both parties have also expressed interest in examining their current IP portfolios to gain insight into possible synergies between their drug targets, and the possibility of making a stronger, better, combined product by coordinating their biotechnologies and enable each company to save millions in R D cost.

Whiteman states that, "The ultimate goal of this collaboration deal is to determine how both companies can help each other to find new promising drug targets for acquisition, and to market our proprietary developmental drugs to Big Pharma such as Biogen, Elan, Merck's and Genentech for clinical studies and further development. The faster we usher our drug targets through the pipelines, the sooner we can start reaping financial rewards from our potential blockbuster drugs over entire length of the patents of 15 - 20 years."