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New Schering Deal Could Net Lion Up to $11 Million

NEW YORK, April 29 - Lion Bioscience could receive up to $11 Million in a six-year licensing deal signed with Schering last week for its DiscoveryCenter software, according to industry sources.

 

The Schering licensing deal includes an up-front fee of about $3 to $5 million, as well as an estimated $100,000 to $1 million in professional services and consulting fees per year, the source said.  Schering, however, has the option to cancel the agreement after three years.

 

This is the longest licensing deal that Lion, of Heidelberg, has signed for its DiscoveryCenter platform.

The Berlin-based global pharmaceutical company said it plans to deploy DiscoveryCenter, a scalable data integration platform, for enterprise-wide target validation efforts.

 

The deal follows on an earlier collaboration in which Lion created a gene database for Schering.

"The reason for the expansion of the deal was customer satisfaction and trust," said Lion CEO Friedrich von Bohlen. Software teams in Ohio and in Cambridge, UK worked on the raw software, he said, while other teams closer to Schering implemented it.

 

While von Bohlen acknowledged that overall spending in pharma is tight these days, he said that it was not difficult, in this case, to open the purse strings because Lion demonstrated it could meet Schering's needs. "There are not many companies anymore that can do professional services with the scientific credibility that we have," he noted.

 

The expanded licensing deal with Schering follows on announcements of licensing arrangements for SRS with Chiron and Axxam, a Milan-based pharmaceutical company.

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