GenVec Inc. and DirectGene Inc. entered a collaboration and license agreement to develop a new class of drugs based on targeted, selectively replicating adenovectors.

GenVec, of Gaithersburg, Md., will get two years of funding to use its technology to develop products for Annapolis, Md.-based DirectGene.

"[DirectGene has] a license to apply the technology for up to three products," said Thomas Smart, GenVec's senior vice president of corporate development.

In addition to the funding, GenVec also would get milestones and royalties if DirectGene ultimately commercializes any products.

Smart said GenVec is developing drugs to be delivered to the site of disease, and that the technology involved in the collaboration is "designed so that the drugs will home in on the sites targeted for treatment at the molecular level."

"This is technology that we have been developing primarily for our own product purposes, so we envision this becoming part of the future generation of products at GenVec," Smart said. "We also recognize other therapeutic strategies that could benefit from our technology.

"We entered into this collaboration with DirectGene because it provides an opportunity to increase the funding for our overall [program]," Smart said, explaining that the funding DirectGene is providing will not fund 100 percent of GenVec's targeting program, but will be used to develop certain applications.

DirectGene, founded in 1999, is developing oncolytic vectors. Smart said the vectors are designed to selectively locate and destroy cancerous tissue by incorporating GenVec's targeting technology.

"Our scientists have been able to modify the outside of the adenovectors, so they no longer bind to the receptors they normally bind to," Smart said.

By eliminating the native binding and incorporating instructions telling the vector where it should bind, the drug is targeted at precise locations, he said, thereby cutting down on toxicities.

DirectGene President and CEO Tim Williamson said the significant thing about the drugs the company is developing is that they are systemically deliverable.

Williamson said combining GenVec's targeting technology and DirectGene's gene promoter technology causes the therapeutic to "achieve the Holy Grail of cancer therapy by being active at the site of the tumor and inactive in other tissues."

He said GenVec will conduct most of the research in its laboratories, but will ultimately transfer the know-how to DirectGene, or the technology involving a targeting moiety on an adenovector that is under the control of DirectGene's gene promoters.

In January, privately held DirectGene entered a collaborative research and development agreement with Intradigm Corp., of Rockville, Md., to develop cancer drugs. The collaboration is focused on using DirectGene's gene promoter technology and Intradigm's targeted synthetic gene vector technologies. Now, the collaborators are in preclinical studies with a drug candidate for prostate cancer, Williamson said. (See BioWorld Today, Jan. 28, 2002.)

GenVec's stock (NASDAQ:GNVC) rose 10 cents Monday to close at $2.90.