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Roche and Covagen collaborate
Roche has entered into a collaboration agreement with Covagen, a Swiss biotechnology company that is developing next generation protein drugs for the treatment of diseases using Fynomer technology at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences at ETH Zurich.
Covagen's innovative platform comprises a novel single domain protein scaffold, which - in analogy to antibodies - can be engineered to yield high affinity binding proteins (Fynomers) that can be used for therapeutic applications. Covagen filed patent applications to protect its drug development platform, allowing it to become active in a new field of intellectual property, which is a significant advantage compared with the antibody field that has been widely claimed already.
Under the terms of the agreement with Roche, Covagen will use its protein engineering technology to isolate Fynomers binding to undisclosed targets provided by Roche. Fynomers delivered by Covagen will be further tested and evaluated by Roche to discover potential new treatments for patients with unmet medical needs.
Dr Dragan Grabulovski, CSO and co-founder of Covagen commented: "This collaboration with Roche represents a further step to establish Covagen's Fynomers as new binding proteins for a variety of applications in drug discovery."
The financial terms of the collaboration agreement have not been disclosed.
Published: 22/06/2009
Content Area: Pharmaceutical industry articlesArticle type: Healthcare news
