Assistant Managing Editor

In its second major corporate collaboration since its 2005 founding in Bangalore, India, Advinus Therapeutics Ltd. agreed to work with Johnson & Johnson unit Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. in a deal that could bring the young firm as much as $247 million in potential milestones.

The drug discovery and development deal will focus on drug candidates for various undisclosed drug targets, with Advinus responsible for handling drug discovery work through Phase IIa studies. After that, Titusville, N.J.-based Ortho-McNeil will have the option to take the candidates into late stage development and possible worldwide commercialization.

The $247 million in milestones would be reached if products against two targets from the collaboration successfully make it to market, and if that happens, Advinus also would be eligible to receive royalties.

The Indian firm could not be reached for comment, but the Ortho-McNeil arrangement is similar to Advinus' 2006 collaboration with Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based Merck & Co. Inc. That deal centers on developing candidates against metabolic disease targets provided by Merck - which, like Ortho-McNeil, has the option of advancing the most promising compounds into late-stage trials - and could result in milestones of up to $74.5 million per target for Advinus. (See BioWorld Today, Nov. 27, 2006.)

To date, Advinus has reached three undisclosed milestones in the Merck collaboration.

The Ortho-McNeil agreement "is a further validation" of the research capabilities in India and shows Advinus' "commitment to bring new drugs to market," Kasim Mookhtiar, chief scientific officer, said in a press release.

Advinus was formed in 2005 by CEO Rashmi Barbhaiya, with financial backing from the Tata Group, a large Indian business conglomerate, with the aim of combining drug discovery efforts with India's well-known cost-effective drug development environment. The company operates two business areas, one of which is to develop targets to the proof-of-concept stage for partners, such as Merck and Ortho-McNeil.

Its focus is in the areas of metabolic disorders, inflammatory disease and neglected diseases. In the latter area, Advinus was brought in to the collaboration between Genzyme Corp., of Cambridge, Mass., and the nonprofit Medicines for Malaria Venture, of Geneva, in August to develop treatments for specific patient groups most at risk for malaria.

It also joined forces last year with the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative for discovery and development of therapies for visceral leishmaniasis, the most severe form of the parasite-causing disease.

Advinus' second business area offers drug development services, a fee-for-service business that includes services such as formulation development, process chemistry, DMPK, clinical pharmacology, stability testing, safety assessments, analytical R&D and bioanalytical work.

Among its service agreements include a 2007 deal with Las Vegas-based Samaritan Pharmaceuticals Inc. to perform validating preclinical studies for Caprospinol (SP-233), Samaritan's lead Alzheimer's disease drug.