Phylogica advancers Pfizer collaboration, achieves research milestone 

(MENAFN - ProactiveInvestors - Australia) Phylogica (ASX: PYC) has successfully achieved a research milestone under its collaboration and licence agreement with Pfizer to discover novel peptide-based vaccines.

The company completed the first stage of the collaboration with Pfizer in December last year, for which Phylogica will receive an undisclosed milestone payment.

To date, the company has successfully identified multiple novel Phylomers that could be a source for peptide-based vaccines and meet the criteria required for further evaluation by Pfizer.

Under the collaboration, which was announced in December 2010, Pfizer has the right to licence any resulting Phylomers for further research, development and commercialisation of novel peptide-based vaccines.

Phylogica received an upfront payment of US500,000 and will receive preclinical, clinical and other milestone payments of up to 134 million, as well as royalties on worldwide sales, under the agreement.


Phylomers

Phylomer peptides are derived from biodiverse natural sequences, which have been selected by evolution to form stable structures, which can bind tightly and specifically to disease associated target proteins, both inside and outside cells.

Diseases that Phylogica's Phylomers target include infectious diseases, cancer, autoimmunity and heart disease.

Last month Phylogica was granted an Australian patent covering the methods of producing designed, synthetic libraries of peptides that are predicted to be rich in structure and, therefore, more likely to be drug-like than conventional random peptides.

The company has similar patents pending in a number of other jurisdictions, including the U.S., Europe and Japan.