Lonza and Odyssey Thera create winning combination
Lonza collaborates with and takes a minority stake in Odyssey Thera.
Swiss pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturer Lonza has agreed to make Odyssey Thera's Proteinfragment Complementation Assay (PCA) technology available to life science and drug discovery researchers.
Under terms of the agreement, Lonza has become a minority shareholder in Odyssey, of San Ramon, CA, US.
Odyssey has granted Lonza an option to certain exclusive global technology licences. The company will also receive technology development funding, milestones and royalties on product and service sales, and additional payments upon option exercise.
The PCA technology allows lead compounds to be tested against a diverse panel of cellular pathways, which generates a unique cellular "signature". This signature is compared with a database of known drugs and failed compounds to determine compound selectivity and potential side effects. Odyssey claims its approach is unique in that it looks at the whole cell response to treatment rather than focusing on a narrow set of possible drug targets.
"This agreement with Odyssey Thera enables Lonza to offer products and services from target identification, through screening and into predictive absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME)," said Teun van der Heide, head of research solutions at Lonza.
"The combination of Odyssey Thera's PCA technology and known drug and toxicant database with Lonza's expertise with primary cells and transfection will enable researchers to perform the most relevant assays in the most relevant cells."
"Our uniquely contextual assays and analytical strategies, combined with Lonza's world leading cellular analysis tools and marketing capabilities, creates a winning combination," added John Westwick, Odyssey's president and ceo.
