MorphoSys secures full-term for strategic alliance with Novartis
MorphoSys and Novartis have committed to a ten-year term for the strategic alliance to establish a pipeline of drugs against a wide range of diseases originally signed in December 2007. The decision is the result of Morphosys successfully achieving certain predefined improvements in its proprietary technologies. The collaboration will now run until 2017 and may be extended by Novartis for an additional two years. The option for Novartis to terminate the alliance after seven years is thereby removed.
MorphoSys and Novartis have committed to a ten-year term for the strategic alliance to establish a pipeline of drugs against a wide range of diseases originally signed in December 2007. The decision is the result of Morphosys successfully achieving certain predefined improvements in its proprietary technologies. The collaboration will now run until 2017 and may be extended by Novartis for an additional two years. The option for Novartis to terminate the alliance after seven years is thereby removed.
In December 2007, MorphoSys and Novartis forged a strategic alliance in the discovery and development of biopharmaceuticals. As part of the alliance, Novartis became MorphoSys's preferred collaborator for HuCAL-based drug discovery.
Financial terms included payments in excess of US$600m over the ten-year lifetime of the agreement. Within the collaboration, two antibody programmes are currently in clinical development.
MorphoSys is focused on the generation of fully human antibodies as a means to discover and develop antibody-based drugs against life-threatening diseases. MorphoSys's goal is to establish HuCAL as the technology of choice for antibody generation in research, diagnostics and therapeutic applications.