CAT And ICOS Link Up For R&D

Cambridge Antibody Technology of the UK has forged a collaborative R&Dagreement with ICOS of the USA in the areas of inflammation, cancer and allergic diseases. ICOS will contribute proprietary expertise and intellecutal property to six targets which should be suitable for antibody therapy. CAT provides antibody expertise and the use of its new functional genomics platforms.

The companies will each bear their own costs during the research stage, and aim to share development costs and future value arising from the collaboration.

New Protein Technology At its results meeting (see page 4) CAT unveiled a new antibody-based technology for discovering the proteins which are involved in disease processes, called ProAb, which it says has already provided new drug targets in the areas of liver cirrhosis and inflammatory bowel disease. The company also gave details of a new technique, ProxiMol, which identifies molecules that are in close proximity to each other.