NEW YORK, Sept 10 – Incyte Genomics said Monday it had extended a deal with Galapagos Genomics of Mechelen, Belgium to further develop an adenoviral library for Incyte’s in-house drug development program.
Under the terms of the agreement, the companies will work to characterize the function of proteins Incyte is studying in its drug discovery and target validation programs.
The deal is an extension of a collaboration announced last year in which the companies agreed to develop and commercialize a recombinant adenoviral library for gene function discovery and validation. During the first phase of the collaboration, which included 1,500 genes from Incyte’s database, the companies tested the genes against several disease model cell lines.
Now, Galapagos will construct a custom adenoviral library with genes relevant to Incyte's in house drug target discovery and validation efforts. Incyte will then further validate the studies using the viruses Galapagos produces.
"We are very pleased with the progress of the current collaboration," Roy Whitfield, CEO of Incyte, said in a statement.
"The Galapagos' adenoviral technology has great value for drug target validation programs and the expansion of the collaboration toward our proprietary therapeutic programs is therefore a logical extension," he added.
Recombinant adenoviral technology is considered to be a cost-effective method that directly associates human genes with phenotypic changes such as morphology, motility, proliferation, differentiation, signal transduction, enzyme, and transport activity, Incyte said.
Financial terms of the latest deal were not disclosed.