X-Chem, Astrazeneca Expand Drug Discovery Collab

Small molecule-focused drug discovery firm X-Chem has entered into an expanded global drug discovery collaboration with AstraZeneca across all of the pharmaceutical company's therapeutic areas and multiple target classes.

The companies entered into a previous collaboration in May of 2012. This new agreement comes just weeks after AstraZeneca elected to license three drug discovery programs resulting from that 2012 effort, directed at an oncology protein-protein interaction target, a respiratory/inflammation PPI target, and an antibacterial target. AstraZeneca has opted to extend the initial research collaboration from two to five years, and X-Chem will conduct drug discovery on at least 10 therapeutic targets per year going forward.

Per the new agreement, X-Chem will receive committed research and development funding for each project, and each X-Chem program licensed by AstraZeneca is eligible for preclinical, clinical, and sales milestones in the aggregate amount of up to $26 million. In addition, X-Chem will receive royalties for each successfully commercialized drug that results from a licensed collaboration program.

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