It's a boost for IntegraGen's efforts in personalised medicine market, as they attempt to further expand their patent portfolio and commercialised products in the areas of obesity and metabolic disorders.
Under the terms of the agreement with DSM, the Company will receive upfront fees, license fees and funding for research and development.
In addition, IntegraGen will be eligible for royalties upon commercialisation. Each company will retain rights to the intellectual property portfolio developed under the collaboration in their areas of focus, being diagnostics and medicines for IntegraGen and nutrition for DSM.
"We recognise that IntegraGen's innovative and pioneering technologies in the field of personalised healthcare have applications across the full spectrum of healthcare from medical treatment to lifestyle management," said Rob van Leen, Chief Innovation Officer at DSM.
"We are delighted to enter into a partnership with a company with such a powerful technology, which, associated with IntegraGen's expertise in the medical/pharma application of personalised healthcare, will allow us to realise the commercial potential of our weight management programmes, an important area within the emerging field of Personalised Nutrition."
Complex diseases such as obesity, Type 2 diabetes mellitus and many central nervous system diseases affect millions of people worldwide. Yet, for many complex reasons, the therapeutic options available to tackle them successfully are limited.
It is recognised that, in many cases, only 30 per cent to 40 per cent of patients suffering with a disease respond positively to a particular drug, either because the drug given fails to target the right pathway for a specific patient or because the patient has a genetic mutation in one of the drug metabolising enzymes, reducing the effectiveness of the treatment.
Early diagnosis, even before clinical onset, would-be possible with greater knowledge of the genes causally implicated in each disease.
Drugs could also be designed to target specific pathways implicated in the disease, resulting in higher positive response rates.
Obviously, neither of these approaches is possible without knowledge of the genes and pathways involved and the appropriate molecular diagnostic tools