Medarex, Inc. and Xerion Pharmaceuticals AG, a privately held company, have entered into a collaborative agreement under which the two companies plan to develop fully human therapeutic antibody products. Under the terms of the agreement, Xerion plans to contribute disease associated targets identified through its Xstream technology, and Medarex expects to generate fully human antibody product candidates against these targets using its UltiMAb Human Antibody Development System. Both companies agreed to share equally the costs and responsibilities of resulting product development and intend to jointly commercialize any antibody products emanating from this collaboration.

"We are excited that Medarex, a major player in the human antibody field, chose to partner with Xerion and to access our unique technologies for target identification and characterization for use with their well-known fully human antibody technology. We are pleased about the prospect of co-developing and commercializing any resulting antibody products with Medarex in this strategic interaction," said Markus Ewert, president and CEO of Xerion.

"We believe that the combination of Xerion's impressive Xstream platform and our UltiMAb technology has the potential to result in novel therapeutics, and we look forward to working with Xerion in this endeavor," said Donald Drakeman, president and CEO of Medarex.