MorphoSys AG announced that it has entered into collaboration with Pfizer Inc for the development of therapeutic antibodies. MorphoSys will use its HuCAL GOLD library to generate therapeutic antibodies against multiple targets from Pfizer. Pfizer will carry out the preclinical and clinical development and the subsequent marketing of resultant products.

MorphoSys will receive an upfront payment, which will further strengthen its cash position, and, for each antibody developed in the collaboration, research support and milestone payments. In addition, MorphoSys stands to receive royalty payments, on any antibody products coming out of the collaboration. The potential value to MorphoSys in committed funding and potential developmental milestone payments on future products is in excess of US$ 50 million, not including royalties.

During the five-year term of the agreement, MorphoSys will use its HuCAL GOLD antibody technology to select and optimize fully human antibodies against disease targets from Pfizer. MorphoSys brings its expertise in the high-throughput selection and subsequent optimization of fully human antibodies fulfilling predefined criteria to combine with Pfizer's capabilities for disease target identification and clinical development.

"We are delighted to enter this alliance with Pfizer focused on developing antibodies derived from our HuCAL technology, "said Dr Simon Moroney, CEO of MorphoSys AG. "This partnership is a further successful step in the execution of our strategy to maximize the number of therapeutic antibodies being developed by committed, high quality partners."

MorphoSys develops and applies innovative technologies for the production of synthetic antibodies, which accelerate drug discovery and target characterization. Founded in 1992, the company's proprietary Human Combinatorial Antibody Library (HuCALâ) technology is used by researchers worldwide for human antibody generation.