Iconix Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a leader in the rapidly emerging field of chemogenomics, announced that it entered into a research and license agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. Under this agreement, Iconix will receive an upfront payment, technology license fees, special project fees, and potential payments based on certain successful commercialization events. Assuming the agreement remains in effect for the full term of the agreement, the total value in committed and contingent funding to Iconix (excluding commercialization fees and royalties) would be $24 million. Other financial details were not disclosed.
Bristol-Myers Squibb will access Iconix's DrugMatrix chemogenomics system and its library of Drug Signatures. DrugMatrix is a reference source of information on the genomic effects of drug and chemical treatments. Iconix scientists have analyzed DrugMatrix to discover over 200 Drug Signatures to date - sets of genes that serve as genomic biomarkers for the prediction of the potential toxicological, mechanistic, and side effect profiles of a drug candidate.
The agreement calls for Iconix to work on several Bristol-Myers Squibb projects each year involving proprietary Bristol-Myers Squibb compounds. Bristol-Myers Squibb will apply Iconix's chemogenomics technology in an effort to better prioritize and select candidate drug molecules and to improve its understanding of the safety and mechanistic profiles of new compounds prior to and during pre-clinical development, and where appropriate during clinical development.
"The pharmacologic and pathophysiologic space covered by the Iconix chemogenomics technology with its associated genomic signatures will permit Bristol-Myers Squibb to reference toxicity and mechanistic data obtained with unknowns and attempt to elucidate mechanisms of toxicity and action. Thoughtful use of this technology has the potential to reduce our compound attrition due to toxicity and off-target pharmacology," said Richard Robertson, PhD, senior vice-president, Drug Safety and Pharmaceutical Candidate Optimization, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute.
"An investment of this size by one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies demonstrates the coming of age of chemogenomics," said Jim Neal, Iconix's CEO. "This technology is rapidly becoming an essential step in the process of discovering new drug candidates and monitoring them through clinical development."