Icagen, Inc announced a one year extension to a prior worldwide collaboration and licensing agreement with Pfizer aimed at discovering, developing and commercializing compounds that modify three specific sodium ion channels as new potential treatments for pain and related disorders.

For the past two years, Icagen and Pfizer have partnered to identify compounds that target three ion channels in a global research and development collaboration. The companies have also formed a joint research committee (JRC) to monitor and oversee the collaboration.

The ion channel targets included in the collaboration are sodium channels, which are important in the generation of electrical signals in nerve fibers that mediate the initiation, transmission and sensation of pain. By selectively targeting these sodium channels, the companies seek to develop effective treatments for serious pain disorders with few side effects.

During the extension period, Pfizer will continue to fund all aspects of the collaboration including research efforts at both companies. Pfizer also will continue to have exclusive worldwide rights to commercialize products resulting from the collaboration. Under the terms of the extended agreement, Pfizer will provide approximately $5.0 million in committed funding to Icagen over the next year of the collaboration through September 30, 2010. Additionally, Icagen remains eligible to receive approximately $359 million in research, development, regulatory and commercialization milestones for each product. Icagen is also eligible to receive tiered royalties, against which the commercialization milestones are creditable, based upon product sales.

"We are very pleased to announce this extension of our previous collaboration with Pfizer," noted P. Kay Wagoner, president and CEO of Icagen. "We have had a great partnership thus far and remain confident that the combined abilities of our two companies will help identify novel drug candidates directed at one or more of these important sodium channel targets for the treatment of pain and related disorders."

Gillian Burgess, chief scientific officer of Pfizer's Pain Research Unit and member of the Icagen-Pfizer JRC, continued, "We have made substantial progress over the first two years of our collaboration and look forward to working with Icagen in the upcoming year in seeking to identify drug candidates from these targeted programmes."

Icagen is a biopharmaceutical company based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of novel orally-administered small molecule drugs that modulate ion channel targets.