Gene Logic, Organon collaborate on discontinued drug candidates

By E. Janene Geiss

Philadelphia, April 21 - Gene Logic Inc. and Organon announced Friday that they have entered into a drug repositioning agreement to seek alternative development paths for multiple drug candidates of which Organon has previously discontinued clinical development.

Under the agreement, Gene Logic will seek new therapeutic uses for Organon compounds, according to a company news release.

Upon discovery of potential new therapeutic utility, both companies will become equal owners and may decide to jointly develop and commercialize the drug candidate.

Gene Logic will receive a success-based milestone payment for each therapeutic candidate that Organon chooses to enter into clinical development, officials said.

Gene Logic's drug repositioning program seeks to find alternative development paths for drug candidates with good safety records that have been deprioritized or discontinued in phase 2 or phase 3 clinical trials.

The program offers pharmaceutical partners a novel approach to bolster their late-stage pipelines with safe, high-quality drug candidates that originated from their own research and development efforts.

Applying a diverse set of drug discovery technologies in parallel, Gene Logic's program evaluates drug candidates for potential utility across a wide spectrum of disease indications, officials said.

"We believe Gene Logic's program has the potential to find new value in our previously deprioritized drug candidates. Organon continues to seek new technologies to increase our drug research output. This technology is an opportunity to address that," David Nicholson, executive vice president of global research and development at Organon, said in the release.

Organon, based in Roseland, N.J., and Oss, The Netherlands, develops, manufactures and markets prescription medicines.

Gene Logic is a Gaithersburg, Md., biotechnology company that focuses on the transformation of pharmaceutical research and development with gene expression databases, toxicogenomics, bioinformatics, specialty nonclinical services testing capabilities and technology program for drug repositioning.

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