BioFocus, a provider integrated drug discovery that delivers pre-clinical drug candidates in all therapeutic areas, announced the achievement of a major development milestone under their provision of medicinal chemistry services agreement with UCB. In August 2008, BioFocus and UCB entered into a drug discovery and development agreement to identify next generation treatments for severe diseases. Under the agreement UCB transferred a team of chemists, from its previous Cambridge (UK) research site, to BioFocus. Together with additional BioFocus staff and UCB scientists, this team then continued their medicinal chemistry work on the UCB programme taking compounds towards the candidate selection stage.

Under the original agreement milestone payments became due when the programme achieved certain development goals, and BioFocus is pleased to announce that a substantial milestone payment has been paid by UCB appropriate to the progression of the programme.

“This milestone payment from UCB demonstrates BioFocus’ ability to support its client projects through to success,” said Chris Newton, senior vice president, Galapagos Services. “This innovative collaboration allows UCB to progress their program externally while applying the specific project expertise that UCB had already built internally.”

“We are pleased with BioFocus’ contribution and our achievement in reaching this milestone.  Collaborations like this one with BioFocus are a foundation of UCB’s strategy and we believe advances towards new therapies can be accelerated by combining our expertise in discovery science with a wide network,” said Neil Weir, senior VP of Discovery, UCB and chair of the Innovation Board of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.