California based pharmaceutical company, Chiron Corporation, announced that it has granted a non-exclusive license to Rigel Pharmaceuticals Inc. for the research, development and commercialization of small molecule therapeutics against certain hepatitis C virus (HCV) drug targets. The financial terms and other details of the license were not disclosed.

"This agreement is another example of Chiron's commitment to making its technology widely available to companies that are working to discover therapeutics for hepatitis C," stated William G. Green, Esq., Chiron senior vice president and general counsel. "We continue to strategically leverage our HCV intellectual property and have an active program to license this technology to other companies while at the same time pursuing our own research of therapeutic agents for hepatitis C."

In 1987, Chiron scientists Michael Houghton, Ph.D.; Qui-Lim Choo, Ph.D.; and George Kuo, Ph.D., cloned and first identified HCV as the cause of transfusion-related non-A, non-B hepatitis. This breakthrough marked the first time a virus was cloned before it had been grown in tissue culture or otherwise isolated. The Chiron scientists received the prestigious Lasker award in recognition of this discovery. Since the initial work, Chiron has been granted more than 100 HCV-related patents in over 20 countries, including patents directed to hepatitis C polypeptides encoded throughout the genomes of HCV. Such polypeptides can be used in a variety of medical applications, including blood screening, clinical diagnosis, and vaccines and as therapeutic targets for drug screening. A number of therapeutic companies have been granted nonexclusive licenses to Chiron's HCV technology for drug screening purposes, including Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Japan Tobacco Inc., Pfizer and Gilead.