Montreal, Canada – January 10, 2006 – Privately held Caprion Pharmaceuticals Inc. announced today that it has entered into an agreement with ImClone Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ: IMCL) under which ImClone Systems may license certain antibody protein targets for the development of therapeutic products to treat cancer and other indications.
Caprion will contribute a selection of cancer targets that it has discovered using its proprietary CellCarta® proteomics technology platform. ImClone Systems will have exclusive, worldwide rights to develop and commercialize therapeutics against any target it selects.
The financial terms of the agreement include an up-front payment, license fees, milestone payments relating to the development of products by ImClone Systems and royalties on commercial sales of such products. Specific financial terms were not disclosed.
"We are pleased to include ImClone Systems as Caprion’s fifth major alliance partner in the area of oncology antibody targets," Martin LeBlanc, Caprion's Chief Operating Officer stated. "This collaboration further strengthens Caprion’s leadership position in this area and emphasizes the depth of our drug discovery and development capabilities.”
About Caprion Pharmaceuticals Inc.
Caprion is a drug discovery and development company applying its proprietary proteomics technologies to develop innovative pharmaceutical products, initially in oncology and infectious disease. The Company's most advanced program will enter Phase II clinical trials in the US for Shiga-toxin producing E. coli infection (STEC) in Q3, 2006. Caprion’s proteomics discovery platform – CellCarta® - has become a leading means for profiling proteins in blood and solid tumors. Caprion’s strategy is to leverage platform discovery and development collaborations in two key areas – oncology and plasma profiling – to fund and further build its own pipeline of clinical programs. In addition to its leading program in STEC, Caprion has signed major research alliances in Colon, Prostate and Lung Cancer with Biogen Idec, AstraZeneca, ICOS Corporation and Abbott Laboratories, as well as numerous alliances for plasma profiling and novel biomarker discovery with leading pharmaceutical companies. For more on Caprion, please visit www.caprion.com
For more information contact:
Nathalie Uson
Caprion Pharmaceuticals Inc.
(514) 940-3617
