Pharmacopeia, Amgen form two new drug discovery collaborations

Amgen licenses Pharmacopeia internal program

Pharmacopeia Inc. (Princeton, NJ) yesterday announced that it has formed two new, multifaceted research collaborations with Amgen Inc. (Thousand Oaks, CA) in which Pharmacopeia will perform both lead discovery and lead optimization.

In one agreement, Amgen has licensed from Pharmacopeia a series of lead compounds, previously identified by Pharmacopeia in an internal program, believed to be effective against a novel target. Assuming the realization of an initial milestone, the two companies will collaborate in an effort to identify a clinical candidate to be developed and commercialized by Amgen.

In a separate lead discovery and optimization agreement, Pharmacopeia and Amgen will collaborate to identify and optimize compounds effective against a proprietary Amgen target. Pharmacopeia will screen its available internal sample collection against the Amgen target. The two companies will collaborate to optimize active compounds that may result from the screening.

Over the course of the collaborations, Pharmacopeia will receive a license fee as well as fees for providing screening and optimization services and additional payments upon identification of active compounds and the achievement of other milestones. Pharmacopeia will also receive royalties on any marketed products that result from the collaborations. Further financial details of the agreements were not disclosed.

"We are pleased that our expertise and historical success in discovering and optimizing compounds against challenging targets has resulted in agreements of this potential magnitude," said Joseph A. Mollica, chairman, president, and CEO of Pharmacopeia. "Regarding the licensing of our internal program, we believe that Pharmacopeia's initial success in identifying a promising set of compounds against a novel target will serve as an excellent starting point for our new collaboration. In our lead discovery and optimization agreement, we feel confident that Amgen will benefit from our multi-million compound sample collection and our expertise in high-throughput screening. We look forward to working with Amgen and achieving success on their behalf."

Amgen is a global biotechnology company that discovers, develops, manufactures and markets cost-effective human therapeutics based on advances in cellular and molecular biology.

Pharmacopeia (www.pharmacopeia.com) is a leader in enabling science and technology that accelerates drug discovery and chemical development. Pharmacopeia's Software segment, which includes MSI, Synopsys Scientific Systems, Oxford Molecular, and GCG, develops and commercializes molecular modeling, simulation, gene sequence analysis, informatics and workflow software, systems and services. Pharmacopeia's Drug Discovery Services segment integrates proprietary small molecule combinatorial chemistry, high-throughput screening, computational methods and informatics to discover and optimize lead compounds and to accelerate customers' drug discovery efforts. Pharmacopeia employs approximately 700 people, generated 1999 revenues of approximately $104 million, and is headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey.

To learn more about Pharmacopeia's products and services, visit the company's storefront on Drug Discovery Online.

For more information, contact Sue Rodney, manager of investor relations for Pharmacopeia, at 609-452-3643 or srodney@pharmacop.com.

Source: Pharmacopeia Inc.