PHARMACOPEIA, INC. ANNOUNCES
NEW COLLABORATION WITH ROCHE BIOSCIENCE
-Leverages New Lead Discovery Services-
Princeton, New Jersey, August 19, 1999 – Pharmacopeia, Inc. (Nasdaq: PCOP) today announced that it has signed a new collaboration agreement with Roche Bioscience, a member of the Roche Group.
Under the terms of this agreement, Pharmacopeia will provide Lead Discovery Services for proprietary targets provided by Roche Bioscience. Pharmacopeia will receive a fee for providing these services and may be entitled to future milestone payments. This agreement may be expanded to include additional targets for additional consideration. Further terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
"We are truly looking forward to working with Roche Bioscience," says Joseph A. Mollica, Ph.D., chairman, president, and CEO. "Not only is this the first time we’ve worked together, but it is yet another opportunity for us to provide our new Lead Discovery Services to a leading pharmaceutical partner. I believe the combination of our large sample collection of chemical compounds and our new high-throughput screening technology offers a unique service to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical marketplace. We look forward to achieving success on behalf of Roche and expanding the list of partners for whom we can provide this exciting new service."
"The vast Pharmacopeia library of chemical compounds should be an important supplement to our internal efforts to identify novel lead compounds for our drug discovery efforts," said Roger Whiting, Ph.D., senior vice president and head of the Roche Bioscience Neurobiology Business Unit.
Pharmacopeia’s new Lead Discovery Services business leverages two of the company’s strengths by combining its multi-million compound sample collection of drug-like small molecules and its high and ultra high-throughput screening technology. For a fee, Pharmacopeia rapidly screens its available internal sample collection against a biotechnology or pharmaceutical partner’s biological target.
Pharmacopeia’s available internal sample collection now exceeds 2.5 million novel small molecules. These compounds are based on multiple scaffolds and are built across more than 130 different libraries. Pharmacopeia’s compounds are designed to have drug-like characteristics and to be optimally diverse.
Using the Company’s new ultra high-throughput screening technology, based on a 1,536 well plate format, Pharmacopeia can test as many as 250,000 compounds per day. This represents a dramatic improvement over traditional 96-well screening, which allows for screening of approximately 20,000 compounds each day.
The goal of Pharmacopeia’s Lead Discovery Services is to deliver active compounds to its partners, ready for further preclinical and clinical development. Chemical optimization of active compounds can be done either at Pharmacopeia Labs, for additional consideration, or by the customer. Customers of Pharmacopeia’s Lead Discovery Services include Schering AG, Pharmacia & Upjohn, and Roche Bioscience.
Located in Palo Alto, Calif., Roche Bioscience is a research-based business-oriented enterprise dedicated to the discovery and accelerated early clinical development of innovative prescription drugs. Roche Bioscience is a member of the Roche Group, headquartered in Basel, Switzerland. The Roche Bioscience website is available at www.roche.com/bioscience.
Pharmacopeia (http://www.pcop.com) is a leader in enabling technology and technology-based services that accelerate drug discovery and chemical development. Pharmacopeia’s laboratory services segment (Pharmacopeia Labs) integrates three platform technologies: informatics, small molecule combinatorial chemistry, and high-throughput screening. Using ECLiPSTM, its proprietary combinatorial chemistry technology, Pharmacopeia Labs has generated more than 5.6 million diverse, small molecules. Pharmacopeia Labs tests these molecules using state-of-the-art high-throughput screening. Pharmacopeia’s software subsidiary, Molecular Simulations Inc. (MSI), develops and commercializes molecular modeling, simulation, and informatics software and services. The Pharmacopeia Labs and MSI technologies are integrated to support the following four businesses: 1) software sales and service for pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and chemical research, 2) chemical compound leasing, 3) collaborative drug discovery, and 4) internal drug discovery. Pharmacopeia employs approximately 550 people and is headquartered in Princeton, NJ. Major regional operations are in San Diego, Calif., Cambridge, England, and Tokyo, Japan.
Except for the historical information contained herein, this statement may contain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of the Company. Pharmacopeia wishes to caution you that such statements are just predictions and that actual events or results may differ materially. Pharmacopeia refers you to the documents that it files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, specifically the Company’s last filed Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. These documents contain and identify important factors, including risk factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those contained in the projections or forward-looking statements.
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