MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Iconix Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a pioneer in chemogenomics, announced an agreement to provide proprietary chemogenomic profiling and analytical services to Eisai Co., Ltd., a leading Japanese pharmaceutical and health care company headquartered in Tokyo.
Under the agreement, scientists from the two companies will collaborate closely to understand Eisai's early stage drug candidates from a chemogenomic perspective. By integrating chemistry and genomics, chemogenomics offers a broad understanding of the pharmacology and toxicology of drug candidates long before clinical development. This also helps avoid surprises once candidates reach human clinical trials. Working with Iconix, Eisai scientists hope to gain an early understanding of the potential toxicology, off-target effects and mechanisms of action of their compounds.
Jim Neal, CEO of Iconix, said, "Eisai's decision to analyze their candidate molecules using chemogenomic tools reinforces both the increasingly important role of toxicogenomics and chemogenomics in forward-thinking drug discovery strategies, and the leading position of Iconix as the world's premier provider of this technology and capability."
About Iconix
Iconix Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is pioneering the new field of chemogenomics, the integration of chemistry and genomics to profile drug candidates. Iconix's chemogenomic capabilities enable pharmaceutical companies to increase the odds of advancing the right compounds to the clinic, reducing attrition rates and the costs of drug discovery.
Iconix provides reference systems and know-how to predict toxic liabilities and side effects of drug candidates, and determine if they are on or off target. The company has strategic partnerships with an ecosystem of leading life sciences companies, including MDS Pharma Services (TSE: MDS; NYSE: MDZ), Incyte Genomics (Nasdaq: INCY) and Amersham Biosciences (OSE: AHM; LSE; NYSE) and collaborations with organizations such as Schering-Plough Research Institute (NYSE: SGP). Iconix also provides research, training and support to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) under an agreement to advance CDER's study of the application of genomic technologies in the regulatory approval process.
Headquartered in Mountain View, California, Iconix was founded in 1998 and is privately held.
About Eisai Co., Ltd.
Eisai Co., Ltd. is a research-based human health care company which discovers, develops and markets products in more than 30 countries. Through a global network of research facilities, manufacturing sites and marketing subsidiaries, Eisai actively participates in all aspects of the worldwide health care system. The Company reported sales of over $3.2 billion in 2001 with approximately 13 percent of sales spent for research and development.
Headquartered in Tokyo, Eisai is also a provider of medical equipment and food additives. Founded in 1941, the company is held in public and can be found on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Osaka Securities Exchange under code number 4523.
CONTACT: Peter Kojalo, +1-510-704-7777, ext. 12, or peter@thepacificgroup.com, for Iconix Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
SOURCE Iconix Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
CONTACT: Peter Kojalo, +1-510-704-7777, ext. 12, or peter@thepacificgroup.com, for Iconix Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
