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Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc. and ImmunoGen Inc. say Millennium will be using ImmunoGen's seek-and-destroy technology to create cancer drugs that obliterate tumors without harming healthy cells.
The technology, Tumor-Activated Prodrug, or TAP, is designed to deliver a highly poisonous cancer-fighting agent to tumors. The agent, naytansine, is 1,000 to 10,000 times more powerful than conventional chemotherapies.
Given on its own, it would indiscriminately kill cancer cells and healthy cells. But ImmunoGen has developed a way to attach the drug to monoclonal antibodies, molecules known for their ability to seek out specific disease-causing cells. TAP technology depends on the antibodies to find the cancer cells, attach to them and be swallowed by them. Once inside the cells, the naytansine is released, delivering the drug directly and only to the cancer.
The deal between the two Cambridge, Mass., biotech firms allows Millennium to apply the TAP technology to a certain number of its own antibodies every year for the next five years in an effort to develop cancer-fighting drugs.
``This deal combines the strengths of a company that knows how to discover targets for drugs with a company that knows how to deliver a toxin to those targets,'' said Walter Newman, Millennium's senior vice president for biotherapeutics.
His colleague, John Maraganore, the company's senior vice president for strategic product development, said ImmunoGen's seek-and-destroy technology may be the key to turning Millennium's knowledge of genes into breakthrough cancer treatments.
The companies are not disclosing the exact amount of the agreement. But ImmunoGen's chairman and chief executive Mitchel Sayare said Millennium paid an upfront fee of $2 million and could make milestone payments of as much as $40 million per antibody. ImmunoGen also will receive royalties on any drugs that result from the collaboration.
The revenue from this deal and other similar deals with California biotech companies Genentech Inc. and Abgenix Inc. will help ImmunoGen fund the discovery and development of its own pipeline of cancer-fighting drugs, Sayare said.
The most advanced of the drugs based on the TAP technology are being tested in human clinical trials. British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline PLC, another ImmunoGen partner, is testing one as a potential treatment for colorectal cancer. ImmunoGen is testing another as a possible treatment for colorectal, pancreatic and certain non-small-cell lung cancers.
In recent years, several monoclonal antibodies, including high-profile cancer drugs like Herceptin and Rituxin, have been approved as treatments for a variety of diseases, making them a popular avenue of research for biotech and pharmaceutical companies.
By arming antibody treatments with a drug like naytansine, Sayare said, they could become even more effective. The ability to arm them also allows many drug companies to rescue monoclonal antibodies languishing on their shelves because they could seek out disease-causing cells but failed to destroy them.
Cancer is one of three disease areas (the others are inflammatory and metabolic disorders) for which Millennium is working to discover and develop drugs and predictive tools.
(The Boston Globe Web site is at http://www.boston.com/globe/)
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