Sticking close to its business plan, Cytokine PharmaSciences Inc. is farming out antibody technology to Baxter Healthcare Corp.

The King of Prussia, Pa.-based company, which makes its living by outlicensing products it once brought in, entered an agreement that exclusively provides its antimacrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) antibody technology to Baxter. Though specific financial terms were not disclosed, Cytokine PharmaSciences will receive money that it called "balanced," through an up-front payment and potential milestones and royalties in return for giving Baxter an exclusive license to all developed indications.

"I think Baxter's experience, particularly in the blood products area with the hemophilia products and the recombinant Factor VIII that they have developed, makes them an excellent partner both from a technology and marketing standpoint," Dennis Willson, Cytokine PharmaSciences' president and CEO, told BioWorld Today. "I would call Baxter an unheralded biotech company - people perhaps don't think of Baxter so much as a biotech company, but actually they are extremely strong in that area."

Deerfield, Ill.-based Baxter, which will assume all further development costs, is preparing to begin preclinical experiments on the technology.

While the nature of Baxter's work was not disclosed, Willson said blocking the production or effect of MIF may be useful in treating an array of diseases, including asthma, severe infections and certain types of cancers. MIF is a cytokine involved in immune, infectious and malignant disorders.

"MIF is a target that is implicated broadly both in the anti-inflammatory and autoimmune disease areas," Willson said, noting that the company's relationship with MIF dates back 10 years.

More precisely, the technology was licensed to Seattle-based Cytokine Networks Inc., a predecessor of Cytokine PharmaSciences, from the Picower Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, N.Y. Cytokine Networks in 1999 merged with PharmaSciences Inc., a drug delivery firm, to form the current company.

Discovered originally by the institute as a product of T cells, MIF also is produced in the anterior pituitary and other organs. Cytokine PharmaSciences, which was assigned all rights to the anti-MIF technology when the institute disbanded at the end of 2001, said such therapy also could offer potential benefits similar to those provided by other anticytokine therapies, including anti-TNF and anti-interleukin-1 compounds.

"The technology has three potential arms," said Willson, who co-founded PharmaSciences in 1992 and was named CEO in July. "There is the antibody approach that has been licensed to Baxter. There is a receptor, which we have identified and patented. There also are small-molecule approaches to antagonizing this target."

Work continues at Cytokine PharmaSciences on the latter two approaches, but the company likely will not see them through to possible registration.

"Our business is to take technologies, develop them and license them to other parties for marketing," Willson said. "We do not do any marketing ourselves, which is another reason why Baxter is such a great fit - they are a big multinational company that provides all the answers in one fell swoop."

As such, Cytokine PharmaSciences chief source of revenue, a cervical ripening product called Cervidil in the U.S. and Propess elsewhere, is licensed to New York-based Forest Laboratories Inc. in the U.S. and Hoofddorp, the Netherlands-based Ferring BV in Europe as part of 1993 agreements. Earlier that year, the company had in-licensed a hydrogel polymer, the basis of Cervidil, from London-based BTG plc.

The product was approved and launched in the U.S. and overseas two years later.

Based on this business plan, Cytokine PharmaSciences has a number of other programs in development, awaiting potential partners.

Its CNI-1493 compound, a p38-MAP kinase inhibitor previously partnered with Elan Corp. plc before the Dublin, Ireland-based firm's financial troubles dissolved the relationship, remains in Phase IIb trials in the U.S. and Europe for Crohn's disease. Cytokine PharmaSciences, which employs eight people in the U.S., entered the Elan partnership in part to develop an oral formulation of the compound based on the latter's technology in that area.

The company also is doing preclinical work to develop small molecules to block a target called iPFK2 (inducible phosphofructokinase 2), an enzyme that enables malignant cells to live and multiply with little oxygen. Willson said the Picower Institute first identified and patented the target.

In its delivery business, Cytokine PharmaSciences maintains 50 employees in Scotland focused on the hydrogel polymer technology from which Cervidil was developed.

A next-generation cervical ripening product is being advanced, while the group also is applying the same polymer to its antimicrobial buccal insert (ABI) product for oral mucosal uses. The ABI product is in Phase II studies, as is Cytokine PharmaSciences' Pilobuc delivery technology, designed to treat xerostomia. The company has progressed to Phase I with a vaginal insert designed to deliver the antibiotic metronidazole for controlled-release treatment of bacterial vaginosis.