Aurigene partners Forest Lab to discover obesity drug

New Delhi, Feb 4 (UNI) Aurigene, a Bangalore-based discovery services company and Forest Laboratories Holdings, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Forest Laboratories have entered into a collaboration agreement to discover drugs for obesity and metabolic disorders.

Under the agreement, Aurigene will undertake and fund discovery and optimisation of lead compounds with close participation by Forest's scientists.

Forest will fund all subsequent drug development and commercialisation activities. In addition, it will have full ownership of the compounds developed under the collaboration with unencumbered worldwide rights.

Forest will pay Aurigene undisclosed research milestones according to a pre-defined research plan as well as sales milestones upon commercialisation of compounds arising from the collaboration.

Aurigene could receive over 60 million dollars in development and sales milestone payments if a compound is successfully commercialised.

Aurigene focusses on collaborative drug discovery with pharmaceutical and biotech companies on a risk-sharing basis.

UNI