By Kim Coghill

Washington Editor

Array BioPharma Inc. agreed to develop small-molecule drug leads for Takeda Chemical Industries Ltd., a Japanese company focused on pharmaceuticals.

Although specific terms were not disclosed, Array, a drug discovery company located in Boulder, Colo., could receive milestones, and royalties based on the sales of products resulting from the collaboration. Other payments made to Array will be based on the number of scientists working on the research phase.

Citing a request by Takeda, David Snitman, Array¿s chief operating officer, would not discuss specific drug targets or other details of the agreement including the duration. ¿We¿re going to work on their project and apply our drug discovery technology,¿ he said.

In a prepared statement, Yasuhiro Sumino, general manager of Takeda, said, ¿We selected Array for this project based on the caliber of their scientists, the breadth of their drug discovery platform and their track record of success.¿

Array employs 150 scientists who developed a drug discovery platform with a heavy emphasis on chemistry and structural biology.

Founded in 1998 by former employees of Amgen Inc., of Thousand Oaks, Calif., it has other collaborations, including an agreement with Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., to discover and develop small-molecule drugs for two targets in phosphatase proteins. (See BioWorld Today, Sept. 6, 2001.)

In another deal, Array is working with ICOS Corp., of Bothell, Wash., to discover and develop small-molecule drugs directed at targets containing the I-domain allosteric site structural motif.