DNage, Loders Croklaan, BG Medicine and Erasmus announce collaboration in the field of type II diabetes
DNage BV, Loders Croklaan BV, through its wholly owned subsidiary Lipid Nutrition BV ("Lipid Nutrition"), BG Medicine Inc ("BG Medicine") and the Erasmus University Medical Center ("Erasmus MC") announced the start of a collaboration to develop new products and biomarkers for type II diabetes. A large portion of the research phase of the program during the first three years will be covered by a 1 million Euro grant from the Dutch governmental organization Senter Novem, an agency of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs.
Under the research collaboration parties intend to validate technology owned by DNage and Erasmus MC for testing products to treat type II diabetes. Lipid Nutrition owns proprietary products potentially useful in dietary management of this disease which will be tested under the program. Another important goal of the collaboration is to identify biomarkers, simple screening tests, to be able to diagnose patients in a very early phase thereby improving chances of successful therapy. This part of the program will make use of proprietary knowledge platforms owned by BG Medicine, combined with tools and intellectual property owned by the other parties.
After successful completion of the research phase, parties will enter into a commercialization agreement, the principles of which have been agreed upon already. Lipid Nutrition will obtain royalty-bearing rights for nutritional products, DNage will obtain similar rights for pharmaceutical products and BG Medicine will obtain such rights for biomarkers.
DNage and Pharming Group NV recently announced that Pharming intends to acquire all outstanding shares of DNage. This transaction is expected to be completed in May after which the DNage rights and obligations under the newly announced collaboration will be taken over by Pharming.
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