Wednesday, December 21, 2016
X-Chem, Inc., a privately held biotechnology company focused on applying its innovative drug discovery capabilities to the generation of novel small molecule therapeutics, today announced that it entered into a multi-target drug discovery collaboration with Taiho Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. This collaboration will grant Taiho access to X-Chem’s DEX™ technology which is based on DNA-encoded libraries of small molecules with more than 120 billion molecules. The aim of the collaboration is to discover innovative lead structures for complex drug targets in multiple therapeutic areas with unmet medical need.
“X-Chem continues to innovate and push the boundaries of its DEX™ Technology platform,” said Rick Wagner, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of X-Chem. “The agreement with Taiho reflects our significant and increasing success in delivering drug leads against a broad range of challenging targets. We’re delighted that Taiho will be our first partner in Japan and look forward to fully deploying our productive platform against their internal targets.”
Under the terms of this new agreement, X-Chem will receive an up-front payment as well as potential pre-clinical, clinical and regulatory milestone payments and sales milestones, up to a total of $352 million. Taiho has an exclusive option to license any programs generated in the course of the collaboration. X-Chem will also receive royalties for each successfully commercialized drug that results from a licensed collaboration program.
