Curis, Inc., a therapeutic drug development company, has established a second major collaboration with Genentech, Inc. This new collaboration, in which Curis will work exclusively with Genentech, involves the discovery and development of small molecule modulators of an undisclosed pathway that plays an important role in cell proliferation. This pathway is a key regulator of tissue formation and repair, and its abnormal activation is associated with certain cancers.

Under the terms of the new agreement, Genentech has committed to pay Curis an up-front license fee of $3 million and up to an additional $6 million over the next two years to support research at Curis dedicated to the collaboration. The agreement also provides for Genentech to make cash payments to Curis contingent upon the successful achievement of certain developmental, clinical, and drug approval milestones. Genentech will also pay a royalty on net product sales if product candidates derived from the collaboration are successfully developed.

The total potential cash payments to Curis from the transaction could exceed $140 million (if two products are commercialized in two indications each), excluding royalties on potential net product sales. In addition, Curis reserves the right to use small molecule modulators of the pathway that are discovered as result of the collaboration for ex vivo cell therapy purposes in areas outside of oncology and hematopoiesis.

Daniel Passeri, president and CEO of Curis, said, "Through a series of proprietary assays, we have been able to rapidly accelerate the identification of drug candidates for core biological disorders, particularly in the fields of regenerative medicine and oncology. This agreement represents a significant investment by a major biotechnology company for these drug discovery processes and our emerging pipeline of drug candidates. It is one more step in our development of a balanced business model that has thus far yielded us a diverse portfolio of drug candidates with multi-staged development structures from which we believe we are better able to manage our product development risk."

Curis' technology focus is on regulatory pathways that control repair and regeneration. Curis' product development involves the use of proteins or small molecules to modulate these pathways.