NicOx S.A. renewed its March 2006 collaboration agreement with Pfizer Inc, which grants Pfizer the exclusive right to apply NicOx's proprietary nitric oxide-donating technology to drug discovery research in the field of ophthalmology.
As part of the new one-year extension agreement NicOx will get €3 million in research funding in March 2008 and prolongs Pfizer's option to license resulting compounds until May 2009.
Under the terms of the agreement, Pfizer paid NicOx an upfront technology license fee of €5 million and made a €15 million equity investment in the Company during 2006. Pfizer has also paid NicOx €6 million in research funding since signature, in the form of two annual payments of €3 million in 2006 and 2007. NicOx will receive a further €3 million in research funding in 2008, due to this extension of the research phase of the agreement. Pfizer now has the option to obtain an exclusive worldwide license to develop and commercialise compounds resulting from the research program, in the field of ophthalmology until May 2009. The agreement provides for total potential milestone payments in excess of €300 million in the ophthalmology field, of which €102 million would arise from the successful full development and launch of the first compound.
The NicOx-Pfizer research team has been focusing its work on several separate projects, which have involved identifying and testing different classes of nitric oxide-donating compounds that could become treatments for major ocular diseases. In the most advanced project, encouraging results have been observed for various compounds in vitro and in vivo preclinical
models of a prevalent eye disease.
Ennio Ongini, vice-president, Research, NicOx, said, "We believe Pfizer's decision to renew this agreement demonstrates its confidence in the joint research team and the potential of NicOx' technology to yield new drug candidates for eye disorders. Considerable progress has been made in the research programs and we are expecting that the collaboration will generate a future candidate for development in a major ocular condition."
An earlier collaboration agreement was executed by the two companies in August 2004 and focused specifically on the research and development of nitric oxide-donating prostaglandin F2-alpha analogs for the treatment of glaucoma. The selected candidate from this earlier agreement, PF-03187207, is in phase II clinical development and two separate studies are currently ongoing in the United States and Japan
NicOx is a product-driven biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the development of investigational nitric oxide-donating drugs to meet unmet medical needs. NicOx is targeting the therapeutic areas of inflammation and cardio-metabolic disease.