AdipoGenix Inc. is getting a valued endorsement as part of an agreement to develop anti-obesity compounds through use of its technology to control fatty acid accumulation.

The Boston-based firm entered a collaboration to screen compounds belonging to Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development LLC, the research arm of Johnson & Johnson.

"We think it's a validation of our approach, technology and scientific expertise," AdipoGenix President and CEO P. Thomas Vogel told BioWorld Today. "I think it also validates us as a young company that's never received any equity funding. For a drug discovery company to get started and up and running these days, and then draw the attention of Johnson & Johnson, I think that's significant as well."

Privately held AdipoGenix will receive an undisclosed up-front payment, as well as milestone payments and licensing fees as compounds advance through development. AdipoGenix also would receive royalties on resulting compounds. Vogel labeled the terms more back-loaded in AdipoGenix's favor.

New Brunswick, N.J.-based J&J will provide its compound library resources. AdipoGenix will screen J&J's compounds and then study leads through use of its human fat cell technologies - its functional, cell-based assay that uses cell repositories from humans.

"We know that if we find anything, the cell tells us that we have a chemical compound that works," Gerri Wologa, AdipoGenix's director of operations, told BioWorld Today. "We know that it works on a target that is human, but not like some companies that use rodent cells. It is a competitive advantage for us to use this functional human cell-based assay at an early stage of drug discovery."

The collaboration aims to develop small molecules that inhibit the accumulation of fatty acid circulating in the blood. But unlike past products developed with the same goal in mind - drugs that work through the central nervous system to suppress appetite or through the stomach to absorb fat - AdipoGenix is directly targeting the fat cell. As such, its compounds are designed to avoid side effects that have plagued other drugs.

Vogel said resulting oral compounds could work either through increasing oxidation, releasing storage, decreasing storage or controlling the process of adipogenesis, the formation of fat cells. The effect of such drugs could positively affect conditions that obesity fuels - diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, aging and cancer.

Its approach also differs from past attempts to control obesity, though.

"We're approaching identification, discovery and development of compounds in a different way than most people use for obesity and diabetes," Vogel said. "Instead of starting with a protein or genomic target, we're starting with the human cell itself in an in vitro screen that we have created ourselves."

AdipoGenix said its use of human fat cells in the early stages of drug discovery allow it to quickly identify potential therapeutics that target fat tissue. AdipoGenix uses its three-part platform - cell repository, cell screening and cell pathway analysis - to screen compounds in human cells for strong hits, which are then screened to determine their pathways.

"It's like peeling back the skin of an onion," Vogel said. "We have three or four levels of screens that work down and give us detail and unfold how these strong hits work."

He said the company could screen against the effect of a drug on one type of a fat vs. another. From its platform stems AdipoGenix's drug discovery work. The three-year-old company said its approach already has resulted in 100 leads that have led to a pair of compounds on track for investigational new drug applications within the next two years. Animal studies have just gotten under way.

"We go from a quick identification of the compound and then go further into trying to find out how the compound works on the cell, to the point of determining the specific target or protein that it's working on," Vogel said.

The 10-employee company was formed from technology developed at Boston University. Its scientific founders include Barbara Corkey and Jeff Leighton, though the company's idea to use the science to screen chemicals came later.

Internally the company plans to continue its discovery work and move its compounds into clinical stages, then partner them out for late-stage clinical work and commercialization. To fund such work, Vogel said AdipoGenix would enter similar collaborations such as the one with J&J, providing its platform to further the partner's discovery work, among other options.

AdipoGenix has been funded to date through SBIR grants from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., as well as through two prior corporate partnerships. Vogel said that AdipoGenix's intention is to continue operating primarily through grants and collaborative funding, though it is for the first time planning to raise supplemental funding through equity financing.

And a little extra funding around its waist would allow AdipoGenix to further its work to reduce fatty acid accumulation.