Indena and Nerviano Medical Sciences Agree to Scale Up New High Potency Molecules

19/07/06 Indena S.p.A., world leader in the identification, development and production of active principles derived from plants, and Nerviano Medical Sciences, the largest pharmaceutical R&D facility in Italy and one of the largest oncology-focused, integrated discovery and development companies in Europe, announce a co-development agreement.

Indena has commissioned Nerviano to handle the scale up and manufacturing of two new drug candidates for preclinical and clinical development: IDN 5404 and IDN 5243.

With this agreement the two companies are sharing synergistically their main competencies, from one side Indena has discovered two new molecules from botanical origin and has set the original semi-synthetic path, Nerviano, thanks to their specialization in highly potent compound present at its API – Pharmaceutical Sciences Business Unit, will scale up the process.

IDN 5404 is a highly potent API selected for its action against tumor resistance to cisplatin and topotecan. IDN 5243 is a novel muscle relaxant agent for the treatment of muscular skeletal pain.

Both molecules are approaching Phase I after having successfully completed preclinical.

Indena has high hopes from this collaboration with Nerviano M.S. with its very advanced and flexible technological platform for the manipulation of highly potent active principles whether as APIs or their finished dosage form.

According to Dario Bonacorsi, Indena President and CEO, “this agreement shows how Italian companies can come together to compete worldwide on new research projects”.

"We are proud and eager to work on concrete projects such as the two Indena molecules; we look forward to being able to expand the collaboration to include other highly potent molecules, which could even be jointly developed by our two research centers, said Giampiero Duglio, CEO of Nerviano Medical Sciences.