HAMBURG, Germany - MorphoSys AG last week said it acquired a nonexclusive license for a single-chain antibody technology from SCA Ventures, of Piscataway, N.J.

"The licensing is part of our strategy to build a strong intellectual property portfolio," Thomas von R|den, chief scientific officer of MorphoSys, told BioWorld International. "The field of recombinant antibodies is surrounded by patents, and it would be very complicated for pharmaceutical partners if they had to negotiate with third parties when they become our customers. It is our aim to become a one-stop shop for companies interested in recombinant human antibody technology.

"Therefore," he said, "we are currently trying to acquire any necessary third-party rights, so that our partners can be sure that the intellectual property is secure. They then will acquire all the necessary rights from us when they use our technology. In the end, we will have one standard contract for all licenses."

He added that MorphoSys, of Martinsried, had already obtained a license for the phage-display technology from Dyax, of Cambridge, Mass., and was negotiating with two other companies about further recombinant antibody technology licenses.

The single-chain antibody (SCA) technology Morpho Sys licensed this month is a proprietary technology of Enzon Inc., of Piscataway, N.J. MorphoSys already is using the method to generate single-chain antibody fragments in its HuCAL antibody library technology. "This use was based on some kind of gentleman's agreement," von R|den said. Negotiations with Enzon had begun a considerable time ago, but the signing of a contract had been postponed until Enzon had formed its subsidiary, SCA Ventures.

SCA Ventures focuses on the commercialization of Enzon's single-chain antigen-binding protein technology for therapeutic and drug discovery purposes. As SCA proteins are developed at the gene level and can be produced in active form inside cells, they are available more readily than monoclonal antibodies and do not need to be humanized in costly procedures. Like monoclonal antibodies, SCA proteins can be used to deliver therapeutic agents to target disease sites in the body, but they also can be utilized to screen libraries in drug discovery programs for the isolation of binding specificities. With SCA proteins, human high-affinity antibodies to many different target antigens can be isolated using phage-display library technology.

Dave Lemus, chief financial officer of MorphoSys, told BioWorld International the agreement permitted the company to use the technology as a research tool in all of its research and development programs. "Also, under the terms of the agreement, we are able to sublicense the research use to our partners if they choose to use our HuCAL antibody library in single-chain format."

Non-SCA products using the single-chain antibody technology are covered by the license, but any SCA products developed by MorphoSys and its partners will require a separate license from SCA Ventures. Lemus said MorphoSys would pay an up-front license fee as well as annual maintenance and technology transfer fees. Financial details were not disclosed. n