Wyeth makes equity investment in AlphaVax, expands licensing deal

By E. Janene Geiss

Philadelphia, Jan. 12 - AlphaVax announced Thursday significant enhancements to its existing license agreement with Wyeth, one of the four largest vaccine companies worldwide.

The new license refocuses the target disease fields and provides Wyeth with exclusive access to all relevant AlphaVax technologies for application to these target fields, according to a company news release.

The exclusive nature of this new agreement will allow closer collaboration between the parties and significantly increases the financial terms of the original license, officials said.

The new agreement also includes an equity investment in AlphaVax by Wyeth.

Under the provisions of the new agreement, the parties have agreed to keep financial terms confidential.

The original agreement, which was executed in 1998, provided Wyeth with access to certain core alphavirus vector technologies controlled by AlphaVax to develop vaccines for selected infectious diseases.

"It is clear that vaccines are an increasingly important public health priority in a wide variety of diseases and biological threats and this reality is driving significant new growth and investment," Peter Young, AlphaVax president and chief executive officer, said in the release.

"Our Wyeth relationship has played an important part in our development since the inception of our company and this new agreement is a very gratifying confirmation of not only our technology's considerable promise but the progress AlphaVax has made as well," Young added.

Wyeth is a Madison, N.J., pharmaceutical company.

AlphaVax is a Research Triangle Park, N.C., clinical-stage company focused on developing new vaccine products for infectious diseases, biodefense and cancer.

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