Vernalis plc, a development stage pharmaceutical company with a broad pipeline of clinical and early stage programmes and Servier, second largest privately-owned pharmaceutical company worldwide, have achieved a research milestone in their three-year oncology drug discovery collaboration initiated in May 2009.  As a result, Vernalis will receive a payment of €0.75m from Servier in recognition of the achievement of desired potency and selectivity criteria in the programme.

Under the terms of the collaboration, which uses Vernalis’ proprietary fragment and structure-based drug discovery platform, Vernalis receives fees and  research milestones and a share in the downstream success of the product in the form of further milestones and royalties on sales.  These terms are not disclosed. This is the second collaboration between Vernalis and Servier, the first collaboration is focused on developing two promising oncology targets involved in protein-protein interactions.

Ian Garland, CEO of Vernalis commented, “Achieving this milestone demonstrates the strength of our fragment and structure-based drug discovery platforms and I look forward to continued success in our collaboration with Servier.”

Emmanuel Canet, president Servier Research and Development, added, “We are very satisfied with this collaboration reaching an important milestone on a truly innovative oncology target. This is a step further in our aim to finalise the discovery of innovative compounds with potential use in therapeutic indications with high unmet medical need. Cancer represents a major cause of mortality worldwide and Servier is committed to providing patients with novel therapeutic approaches for treating this devastating disease.”

Servier is the leading independent French pharmaceutical company. The group is established in 140 countries and 85% of Servier products are prescribed outside of France.

Vernalis is a development stage pharmaceutical company with significant expertise in taking promising product candidates along a commercially-focused path to market.