Pfizer and MorphoSys expand antibody partnership

MorphoSys has announced that it has extended its therapeutic antibody partnership with Pfizer to last until the end of 2011, with Pfizer paying an undisclosed one-off fee to MorphoSys.

Additionally, under the new terms of the agreement, Pfizer may commence new projects with the company, with the potential level of research funding and payments granted to MorphoSys on reaching development milestones rising to over $100 million (50.75 million pounds).

The original collaboration agreement was signed in December 2003 and due to expire five years later and currently includes five programmes involving active therapeutic antibodies.

As in the terms of this original agreement, MorphoSys will continue to utilise its HuCal Gold library to generate therapeutic antibodies against a number of new targets from Pfizer, while Pfizer conducts preclinical and clinical development of the products that result from this process.

Simon Moroney, chief executive officer of MorphoSys, said: “We are very pleased by the successful progress in our collaboration with Pfizer and their decision to intensify this alliance, which will now run until 2001.”

He added that MorphoSys has extended four partnership deals throughout 2006, in addition to signing three new commercial partnerships.

Last month, Pfizer announced that it was ending its collaboration agreement with Organon for the development of bipolar I disorder drug candidate for commercial reasons.