By Brady Huggett

Hybrigenics SA, proving itself first with a fellow French company, signed a three-year drug target discovery collaboration and license agreement with the privately owned Group de Recherche Servier for anticancer drugs.

Servier will supply proteins to Hybrigenics, of Paris, which will in turn map protein-protein interactions in specific cellular pathways. Servier, also of France, will provide research funding for three years, as well as up-front cash and milestone payments. Hybrigenics will receive royalties related to development and commercialization of any resulting pharmaceuticals and Servier obtains exclusive worldwide rights to develop and market drugs against the selected targets.

"[Servier] is a type of pharma company that has not gone for genomics," said Donny Strosberg, CEO of Hybrigenics. "It is too expensive for them. They were waiting for the right opportunity to get into proteomics, waiting for some new technology that would accelerate drug discovery, and they feel proteomics has a better chance than genomics has.

"Servier cannot afford to be in the whole genome," he added. "They see the value of [proteomics] much better than, say, a Glaxo or Pfizer would, these larger companies that are much more into the genomics end."

Hybrigenics identifies protein-protein interactions and uses them to build its Protein Interaction Maps (PIMs) and dedicated databases. Its PIM technology was recently highlighted in the Jan. 11, 2001, issue of Nature and Strosberg said it's this technology that sets Hybrigenics apart.

"We demonstrated that the level of false positives [for Hybrigenics] is probably 3 percent," he told BioWorld Today. "We can do a lot more interactions per day than others. We do 40 million interactions per bait protein and we are going to possibility go to doing 50 bait proteins per week. The reason we are doing so many interactions is that we are looking many times at the same open reading frames corresponding to the same prey proteins, so we can avoid the false positives."

The work ahead for Hybrigenics and Servier will begin with cancer.

"Right now it is only cancer," Strosberg said. "For the time being, it is focused on one signal pathway. We will explore it and we will come up with new protein partners."

Strosberg added that the deal includes an option for Servier to extend the field of application into areas beyond cancer, and while the option can be addressed at any time, terms have not been fixed.

Although details of milestones and up-front cash were not disclosed, Servier's funding will certainly brighten the faces of Hybrigenics' accountants, Strosberg said, but added the deal means more to the company than financial freedom.

"It is a sizable chunk of our burn rate that we can now compensate for," Strosberg said. "It's not a mega, mega deal, but it's a nice deal. But from out point of view, as a French company, we had to show that at least one French company would go for [PIM technology]. And it's the first nonbiotech deal for us. That is a signal for other pharma companies to work with us."

Servier has a commitment to cancer and is not so large as to have a finger in every pie. That is a benefit, Strosberg said, to working with the company.

"We stand a much better chance of benefiting from royalties and milestones because they don't have that many programs," he said. "Cancer is one of their main focuses."

Strosberg pointed to CuraGen Corp., of New Haven, Conn., and Myriad Genetics Inc., of Salt Lake City, as competitors. But he said Hybrigenics' technology is running well, the company is seeking other deals, and has a plan.

"We don't want to go in many different directions, but we are looking at other cancer deals," he said. "Our viral programs we will probably keep to ourselves. We want to have a jewel approach where we have our own drug discovery effort and partner out with pharma in the area of cancer." n