By Brady Huggett

TransTech Pharma Inc. scored its first collaboration, solidifying a five-year deal with Novo Nordisk A/S and joining the ranks of biotechnology¿s deal makers.

TransTech will use its Translational Technology, made up of PharmaChem Space, TTProbes and PharmaBio Space, to turn out clinical candidates from Novo¿s targets.

¿I¿m very happy because this is our first collaboration,¿ said Adnan Mjalli, TransTech¿s president, CEO and founder. ¿Novo is a good partner and were are extremely happy with the size and structure of the deal.¿

TransTech will receive an up-front payment in the deal, as well as research support, milestones and royalty payments on approved products. Novo, of Copenhagen, Denmark, gets an exclusive worldwide license to certain realized products. While the financial specifics were not released, Mjalli said the deal was in line with others in the biotechnology sector.

¿They are quite significant milestone payments but it is Novo¿s policy not to disclose them,¿ Mjalli told BioWorld Today. ¿The deal is for five biological targets, there is a technology access fee, and milestone payments that are consistent with the standard deals.¿ Mjalli, saying he could not disclose indications, added that the companies will focus ¿in general, on human therapeutics.¿

High Point, N.C.-based TransTech¿s Translational Technology consists of rapid ligand synthesis, high-throughput analysis and characterization, high-throughput in vitro and in vivo testing and reiteration, plus an informatics system.

¿We have internally been able to take on difficult programs, such as protein-protein programs, and be successful,¿ Mjalli said. When asked about a timeline for getting candidates off Novo¿s targets into clinical development, Mjalli said that whatever the time, it will be shortened.

¿It is hard to give a specific time,¿ he said. ¿We could tell you that we would be able to put things in the clinic much quicker than what is the standard or the norm.¿

Translational Technology achieves results in the shortened timeframe because the current ways of analyzing targets, such as through knockout experiments or 3-dimensional crystallization, are time consuming. And, as the number of biological targets increase, time will become more crucial, Mjalli said.

¿Our Translational Technology is designed in conjunction with genomic and proteomic technologies, to rapidly validate the function of a wide range of novel biological targets and discover novel small molecules as preclinical drug candidates,¿ Mjalli said. ¿Therefore, it provides an efficient translation of novel targets to drug candidates, bypassing most of the classical bottlenecks in drug discovery.

Mjalli founded TransTech in 1999. ¿TransTech has developed and successfully applied its technology to a wide range of proprietary biological targets and produced novel small-molecule drug candidates for the treatment of diabetes, cancer, inflammation, Alzheimer's disease and thrombosis,¿ Mjalli said

Its first proprietary biological target -- Receptor for Advanced Glycation Endproducts -- was exclusively licensed from Columbia University. That got the company its start, and TransTech received $4 million from MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc. in its first round of funding. MacAndrews and Forbes threw in another $3.5 million last year, Mjalli said, and TransTech has raised nearly $10 million in its first two rounds. It is finalizing its third round, expected to close in late August or early September.

¿I think we will have more [investors] than we need,¿ Mjalli said. ¿It¿s tough out there, but I think there is plenty of money for good ideas and viable companies. I think we will be turning away some of the potential investors.¿

The pieces are in place for TransTech to make its way in the industry now. After being a one-man show in January 1999, the company grew to 20 employees last year and now has bulged to about 60. By late September, right after it should close its third round, TransTech will double its space, gaining a 14,000-square-foot facility to match the 14,000-square-foot one it currently has. All this in little more than a year, Mjalli pointed out.

¿We really only became functional last June or July,¿ he said.