By Frances Bishopp

In its first major corporate alliance since its founding a year ago, Gene Logic Inc., a genomics company, has signed a collaboration, potentially worth up to $75 million, with Procter & Gamble Co. to discover genetic targets for drug development in heart failure and two other undisclosed diseases.

Gene Logic, of Columbia, Md., focuses on tracking a series of disease-related gene expressions, as opposed to seeking one mutated gene at a time. Under the agreement, Gene Logic will use its Accelerated Target Discovery platform to analyze gene expression and gene regulation in human heart tissue to identify genes related to the onset and progression of heart failure.

Michael Brennan, president and CEO of Gene Logic, told BioWorld Today that Proctor & Gamble has the option to expand the deal to include gene target discovery in two additional undisclosed disease indications.

Proctor & Gamble, of Cincinnati, will provide approximately $12 million in research support and data base access fees for the heart failure indication. Part of the $12 million is a $3 million cash payment to initiate the alliance. Milestone payments could total approximately $13 million, giving the deal for the heart failure indication a value of approximately $25 million.

Brennan said the other two disease indications would have similar terms, giving the overall collaboration a potential value of $75 million.

The first stage of the alliance will be 18 months, Brennan said, and the second stage is three years, a total of four and one-half years for all three indications.

Gene Logic, which began with a staff of three, and now 45, is a high-throughput, functional genomics company using a new system based on analysis of gene expression and gene regulation to accelerate the discovery of drug targets and drug leads. The Accelerated Target Discovery platform monitors the expression level of every gene in a given tissue or cell type, with a high degree of sensitivity, reliability and accuracy.

Science Opens Window On Cell Function

"This technology allows us to compare the genes that are being used in normal cells with those being used in diseased cells," Brennan said, "so we would be able to look, for example, at normal heart tissue and at heart tissue in varying degrees of heart failure to identify the genes that are switched on or switched off as the heart goes into failure and to analyze those genes for their suitability as potential drug targets.

"This technology gives us a window on what the cell is doing at the molecular level," he added.

Proctor & Gamble's pharmaceutical division will take any new genetic targets discovered by Gene Logic and put them into a high-throughput screening system. Gene Logic will get milestone payments for providing the targets and on Proctor & Gamble's success in finding lead compounds and developing drugs.

Gene Logic will receive royalties on sales of all products resulting from its gene discoveries.

In November 1996, Gene Logic produced the world's first "molecular topograph," a complete quantitative picture of all the genes used in a human cell.

Gene Logic now routinely creates "molecular movies," a series of molecular topographies showing the changes in gene expression patterns as a disease develops and progresses in a specific cell or tissue type, across different cell types and in cells treated with various drugs or experimental compounds.

By using its bioinformatics software, Gene Logic said it can identify which expressed genes are implicated in the disease and can provide greater numbers of targets for drug discovery in a shorter time and at a lower cost than other genomics firms. *