West Coast Editor

Odyssey Thera Inc.'s ongoing relationship with Pfizer Inc. yielded an expanded alliance that includes up-front cash, research funding and milestone payments as Odyssey uses its protein fragment complementation assay platform to test the selectivity of the pharma giant's compounds.

John Westwick, president and chief scientific officer of Odyssey, would not provide financial specifics but called the multi-year deal "a major step up" in the arrangement with Pfizer, and a "transforming event" for Odyssey.

Previous deals with Pfizer and others had a much narrower scope. "I wouldn't say they were one-off projects, but they were limited," Westwick said.

To separate the on-target activities from those that are off the pathway, Odyssey charts alterations in the cells' biochemical networks after a compound starts acting. Last May, the firm disclosed its second agreement with New York-based Pfizer - focusing on 500 compounds from multiple therapeutic areas - and its success led to the latest deal, which also involves the development of tools and strategies to find drugs with better safety and selectivity profiles.

Pfizer is "forward looking in this area," Westwick said. "They really took the plunge much earlier than anyone else," first hooking up with Odyssey about two and a half years ago, he added.

Odyssey, of San Ramon, Calif., has signed deals in recent years for PCA with the National Institutes of Health, New York-based Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Lexicon Genetics Inc., of The Woodlands, Texas.

The intellectual property continues to build. In June, Odyssey had a patent granted in the U.S. for single-color and multi-color PCAs in drug discovery. Two others (the fifth and sixth) were granted last year, covering methods, compositions and uses of the PCA approach.

Odyssey also does pharmacological profiling. The firm has tested 60 known cancer drugs with diverse mechanisms of action against various signaling pathways, in a program called KUDOS (Known/Unknown Drug Optimization Strategy).

There's a drug-discovery effort, too, that focuses on cancer. Scientists at Odyssey have mapped more than 1,000 protein-protein complexes within the cell pathways controlling apoptosis, DNA damage responses, cell-cycle control, mitogenesis and angiogenesis, and it has advanced a number of pathways into high-throughput screening of small-molecule libraries.

"The model is to partner [the internally developed drug candidates]," Westwick said. "We're not a chemistry company, so we're trying to stick to our strengths." Odyssey is "developing very solid relationships" with pharmaceutical firms in deals, not all of which have been made public, he said, and ties with the likes of Pfizer "certainly opens up opportunities" for possible drug development partnerships later.