Affectis Pharmaceuticals and Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation Enters Drug Discovery Collaboration

Munich, Germany - Affectis Pharmaceuticals AG, a biopharmaceutical company developing innovative drugs to treat depression and schizophrenia, today announced the closing of a drug discovery collaboration agreement with Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation (MTPC), Osaka, Japan, covering the use of Affectis’ behavioural pharmacology expertise and technology.

Under the terms of the agreement, Affectis will receive research fees from MTPC as well as development milestones..

The collaboration applies Affectis’ extensive expertise in behavioural pharmacology to assist MTPC in discovering new anti-depressants in an ongoing drug discovery program. The discovery program is based on a novel depression target that Affectis helped validate in a previous collaboration between the two companies.

Dr Herbert Stadler, CEO of Affectis, said: "We are very pleased with MTPC’s decision to start a new collaboration with Affectis. This is a strong validation of our behavioural pharmacology capabilities and our Behavioural Interference™ technology platform, in particular in view of MTPC’s position as a leading player in the global pharmaceutical industry with strengths in CNS research.”

Affectis and MTPC first signed a collaboration agreement covering the Behavioural Interference™ technology in February 2005. Under the terms of the previous agreement, Affectis validated a number of potential novel depression targets.