Protarga Inc. hooked its first corporate partner - ICOS Corp. - in a deal to investigate the application of its Targaceutical vectors to ICOS compounds.

"This is a new program under way at Protarga," said Robert Dickey, senior vice president, finance, and chief financial officer at Protarga. "This [type of partnership] is something we've been thinking about for a while, and this is our first corporate agreement."

Protarga signed on with the Bethesda, Md.-based National Cancer Institute in April 2000, agreeing to attach its vectors to NCI targets for preclinical studies at the NCI. (See BioWorld Today, April 28, 2000.)

In the ICOS deal, Protarga, of King of Prussia, Pa., will chemically link fatty acid vectors to Bothell, Wash.-based ICOS' cancer drug candidates that are based on cell cycle checkpoints. The fatty acid attachment is designed to delay the release of the agent until the target tissue takes up the drug. Financial aspects of the deal were not released. Dickey, however, told BioWorld Today both companies are investing funds and will mutually own the intellectual property that arises. ICOS will test any resulting compounds in animal models, but decisions about further development will be made together.

Although ICOS is Protarga's first corporate partner for its Targaceutical technology, Dickey said the company will look for more.

"I think that with our technology, there are various aspects that may be applicable to a variety of compounds that either need to be better targeted to a tissue or need a prolonging of activity in that tissue," he said.

Protarga's lead product, Taxoprexin Injection, is in eight Phase II trials involving more than 300 patients, meaning the product is "almost three-fourths of the way through the Phase IIs," Dickey said. A timeline for Phase III work has not been made public, but Protarga is aiming for a meeting with the FDA "fairly soon," he said.

Just before the turn of the year, Protarga filed for an initial public offering, seeking an estimated $75 million. The markets have remained tight since then and already-scarce initial public offerings have become more so. But even in the face of such dismal investing conditions, Protarga remains resolute. (See BioWorld Today, Dec. 13, 2001.)

"We're going to keep the registration [statement] alive and just watch the markets," Dickey said. "Like everyone else, we've just been watching and waiting and we'll continue to do that."

ICOS' stock (NASDAQ:ICOS) gained $3.03 Monday, or 15.9 percent on a strong day for biotechnology shares, to close at $22.04.