BioTie Therapies signs agreement with Aventis

Biotie Therapies Corp. announced the signing of a commercial research and option agreement with Aventis for the joint development of a new pharmaceutical product for the prevention and treatment of blood coagulation disorders.

Under the terms of the agreement, BioTie has granted Aventis an exclusive right to negotiate a license agreement as well as to assess and conduct clinical research on the BioTie developed products. For this exclusive option Aventis has agreed to pay BioTie during the next twelve months 5 million euros in signing fee and milestone payments. The signing fee is payable once the agreement has entered into force, and milestone payments are payable in accordance with jointly agreed development milestones.

The agreement follows a preliminary evaluation by Aventis of BioTie’s bioheparin products. In the preliminary evaluation, BioTie’s bioheparin products met Aventis criteria for a New Chemical Entity (NCE) to be used as the basis for a new heparin-like product.
BioTie and Aventis are now aiming to optimise this NCE, which is designed to become a recombinant oral heparinoid.

BioTie Therapies is a Finnish biotech company with focus on dependence disorders, inflammatory diseases and glycobiology. BioTie has been developing recombinant Bioheparin since 1996, when BioTie joined the first European Union funded Research Consortium, where the aim was to develop non-animal derived heparins. The leading European academic research groups involved in this heparin consortium were fundamental in the initial research of “BioHeparin”. For more information, please visit www.biotie.com