Lexicon Genetics Incorporated and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited announced the formation of a collaboration to develop new drugs for the treatment of high blood pressure. The alliance is designed to accelerate the development and commercialization of new drugs directed against promising hypertension targets discovered in Lexicon's Genome5000 programme, a release said.
In the collaboration, Takeda will have exclusive access to all drug targets from Lexicon's Genome5000 programme that control blood pressure. In this programme, Lexicon is using its proprietary gene knockout technology to rapidly discover the functions of 5,000 of the most pharmaceutically important genes in the human genome. Takeda will be responsible for the screening, medicinal chemistry, preclinical and clinical development and commercialization of drugs directed against Lexicon's novel blood pressure targets, and will bear all related costs.
Lexicon will receive an upfront payment of $12 million from Takeda for the initial, three-year term of the agreement. Takeda has the option to extend the discovery portion of the alliance for an additional two years in exchange for further committed funding. Takeda will make research milestone payments to Lexicon for each target selected for therapeutic development. In addition, Takeda will make clinical development and product launch milestone payments to Lexicon for each product commercialized from the collaboration. Lexicon will also earn royalties on worldwide sales of drugs commercialized by Takeda, the release added.
The collaboration is intended to bring novel therapeutics to patients suffering from high blood pressure by combining Lexicon's physiology-based approach to understanding gene function with Takeda's global leadership in the research, development and sales of hypertension drugs.
"Takeda has a well established global hypertension franchise and is committed to creating a sustainable leadership position in this disease area," said Arthur T Sands, president and chief executive officer of Lexicon. "With Lexicon's robust drug discovery pipeline, it is important to form strategic collaborations to rapidly advance our novel programs into clinical development. Forming such an alliance with a recognized leader like Takeda is the best way to accelerate discoveries in this field toward commercialization," he added.
"In addition to our in-house research for the creation of new drugs, Takeda is pursuing all means of enhancing its R&D pipeline, including external drug discovery and development alliances," said Takashi Soda, director, general manager of the pharmaceutical research division of Takeda. "We are confident that Lexicon's Genome5000 programme will provide us with important drug targets for treatment of hypertension, which will enable us to create a new generation of anti-hypertensive drugs," Takashi concluded.
Global sales of hypertension drugs exceeded $22 billion in 2003, and the potential market for new hypertension therapies is significant.