CLEVELAND, Jan. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Athersys announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary, 3-Dimensional Pharmaceuticals (J&J), to provide cell lines expressing drug targets for use in certain pharmaceutical development programs. The agreement provides J&J researchers with non-exclusive access to engineered cell lines that express targets for drug discovery in a variety of therapeutic areas.
Athersys will provide Johnson & Johnson with human cell lines optimized for use in high-throughput screening programs, which are produced with its proprietary RAGE (Random Activation of Gene Expression(TM)) technology platform. In addition, Athersys and J&J will unwind certain co-development projects that were established through an earlier alliance between Athersys and 3-Dimensional Pharmaceuticals. Athersys intends to use its internal chemistry and pharmacology capabilities to advance its proprietary compounds in the areas of oncology, asthma and obesity. Athersys has received a one-time fee related to the agreement.
“Athersys is committed to partnering with leading pharmaceutical companies like Johnson & Johnson to help them advance their product discovery and development efforts,” said Gil Van Bokkelen, president and chief executive officer of Athersys. “While we will continue to provide access to our technologies to our existing partners, we intend to establish additional partnerships with leading medical products companies around our own therapeutic product candidates. Our original partnership allowed us to leverage the chemistry capabilities of 3-Dimensional Pharmaceuticals. However, we have established our own chemistry and pharmacology capabilities, and are increasingly focused on taking our proprietary portfolio of regenerative medicine and drug development programs further into development and finding the right partners to help us advance certain programs through the clinic and into the market.”
Athersys is a biopharmaceutical company engaged in the development and commercialization of therapeutic products to treat significant and life- threatening diseases. Using its broad portfolio of novel and proprietary technologies, Athersys is developing multiple classes of therapeutic products, including synthetic pharmaceuticals, monoclonal antibodies, proteins and cell therapy based treatments. Athersys currently has active therapeutic product programs in the areas of oncology, inflammation, obesity and neurobiology, consisting of synthetic pharmaceutical and monoclonal antibody programs. In addition, the company has initiated cell therapy development activities using its proprietary MAPC(TM) (Multipotent Adult Progenitor Cell(TM)) adult stem cell technology in multiple areas such as cardiovascular disease, immunology, development disorders, hematopoietic malignancies and certain metabolic disorders. Athersys’ RAGE and GECKO (Genome-wide Cell-based Knockout(TM)) technologies have powerful applications in functional genomics, the generation of cell lines expressing validated drug targets, the development of protein and monoclonal antibody therapies and the identification of cellular differentiation factors. This press release and further information on Athersys, Inc. can be found on the World Wide Web at: http://www.athersys.com/ .
Athersys, Inc.
CONTACT: William Lehmann, Executive Vice President, CorporateDevelopment and Finance of Athersys, Inc., +1-216-431-9900
Web site: http://www.athersys.com/
