Lexicon Genetics Incorporated and Organon, the human healthcare business of Akzo Nobel, have made a collaboration to jointly discover, develop and commercialize novel biotherapeutics. The collaboration is designed to combine Lexicon's target discovery and biotherapeutics capabilities with Organon clinical development, biologics manufacturing and commercialization franchise to accelerate the development of novel therapeutic antibodies and secreted proteins.

"This collaboration, in conjunction with the establishment of our new biotechnology research centre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, reinforces the strong commitment at Organon to research and development and alliances to expand our biopharmaceutical franchise into other areas, including immunology," stated David Nicholson, executive vice-president global research at Organon.

Organon and Lexicon will initiate the collaboration by selecting up to 300 genes that encode secreted proteins or potential antibody targets. Lexicon will create and analyze mouse knockouts of each of the 300 genes to identify promising human drug targets. Organon and Lexicon will jointly select targets for further research and development and will equally share costs and responsibility for research, preclinical and clinical activities. Organon and Lexicon will together determine how best to commercialize collaboration products and will equally benefit from product revenue. Organon will have principal responsibility for the manufacturing of biotherapeutic products resulting from the collaboration for use in clinical trials and for worldwide sales, a release from Organon stated.

Lexicon will provide two of its advanced drug discovery programs for inclusion in the collaboration. Lexicon will receive an upfront payment of $22.5 million from Organon in exchange for access to Lexicon's drug target discovery capabilities and the exclusive right to co-develop biotherapeutic products that modulate the 300 genes selected for the collaboration, including the two existing drug discovery programs. Organon will also provide annual research funding totalling up to $50 million to Lexicon for Organon's 50% share of the collaboration's costs during the four-year target function discovery portion of the alliance.