Jubilant Organosys has signed a research collaboration agreement with AstraZeneca through its subsidiary, Jubilant Biosys. The main focus will be on delivering novel drug candidates into the international pharmaceutical company's pre-clinical pipeline. Under the shared risk-reward collaboration, which will initially focus on the neuroscience area, Jubilant aims to deliver a steady stream of discovery programmes to AstraZeneca.

AstraZeneca will own the compounds developed under the collaboration with worldwide development and commercialization rights. Jubilant will be eligible to receive research funding spanning an initial five-year period. In addition, AstraZeneca will also pay Jubilant success-based development milestones, as well as royalties based on successful global commercialization of any of the compounds.

Shayam Bhartia, chairman & managing director and Hari Bhartia, co-chairman and managing director, said, "We are very pleased to partner with AstraZeneca this collaboration will leverage the innovative capabilities of AstraZeneca and Jubilant Biosys in providing a robust global drug discovery model. Through this partnership, Jubilant is confident of contributing to AstraZeneca's preclinical portfolio and anticipates significant rewards from successful downstream milestones. This partnership furthers Jubilant's strategy to be India's largest provider of innovative and integrated pharmaceutical solutions enabling the global pharmaceutical industry's quest to discover affordable innovative medicines."

Jan Lundberg, executive vice-president, Global Discovery, at AstraZeneca, said, "This collaboration complements our internal capabilities and increases the capacity of our pre-clinical programmes. It is a concrete example of the innovative approaches we are taking to deliver a sustainable Discovery pipeline with a lead and agile organization. Ultimately, this will provide us with more shots on goal as we look to sustain a competitive portfolio and provide meaningful medicines to patients."

Jubilant Biosys, a subsidiary of Jubilant Organosys, has an integrated state of the art facility in Bangalore with 300 scientists specializing in multiple disciplines to include discovery biology, medicinal chemistry, structural biology, pharmacology, toxicology pharma chem, molecular modeling, crystallography and information technology supporting discovery efforts.