NeoGenesis Pharmaceuticals Inc. entered a multiyear collaboration with Pharmacia Corp. to discover and develop drugs that target undisclosed diseases.

NeoGenesis, of Cambridge, Mass., will use its chemical genomics expertise with targets provided by Peapack, N.J.-based Pharmacia, which is being acquired by New York-based Pfizer Inc. in a $60 billion deal.

"Pharmacia will bring us the targets for very high-profile diseases," NeoGenesis CEO Satish Jindal said. "NeoGenesis will apply its drug discovery technology platform to deliver drug leads to Pharmacia."

Jindal would not disclose specifics of the deal, but did say NeoGenesis would receive up-front payments for research, both preclinical and clinical milestones, and royalties on any sales.

"One of the significant aspects is the very high likelihood of coming up with important medicines for unmet medical needs," Jindal told BioWorld Today.

NeoGenesis will use its NeoMorph compound libraries, made up of 10 million drug-like small molecules, and the Automated Ligand Identification System, or ALIS, against a number of targets, he said.

"We will use these compounds and technologies in an unbiased fashion to discover ligands which bind with the target proteins with high affinity and high selectivity," Jindal said.

The company also will carry out the optimization of interesting lead series to provide drug leads to Pharmacia, a point NeoGenesis plans to be at within a couple of months. At that point, Pharmacia will take over to conduct preclinical and clinical development, Jindal said.

"The power of the NeoGenesis approach is its unbiased chemistry, which has a high potential of providing novel and patentable drug leads," Jindal said. "This technology bypasses the major bottlenecks, which are encountered with conventional drug discovery techniques like assay development and high-resolution functional and structural information."

In February, NeoGenesis entered a multiyear collaboration with Aventis Pharma SA, of Paris, to identify therapeutic agents for infectious diseases. That agreement provided NeoGenesis with an up-front payment, a multiyear commitment of research and development funding, preclinical and clinical milestones and royalties. (See BioWorld Today, Feb. 15, 2002.)

Privately held NeoGenesis also has forged deals over its five-year history with companies including Schering-Plough Corp., of Madison, N.J.; Merck & Co Inc., of Whitehouse Station, N.J.; Tularik Inc., of South San Francisco; Biogen Inc., also of Cambridge; Celltech Group plc, of Slough, UK; Oxford GlycoSciences plc, of Oxford, UK; and Immusol Inc., of San Diego.