Becton Dickinson/Nexagen
This article was originally published in The Gray Sheet
Executive Summary
Sign three-year renewable collaborative agreement which will allow B-D exclusive rights to in vitro diagnostics developed using Nexagen's proprietary SELEX (Systematic Evolution of Ligands by Exponential Enrichment) technology. The two firms will work together on developing compounds to be used in the IVDs; the IVDs will be developed and marketed by B-D. Under the terms of the deal, B-D will provide research funding to Nexagen and has made a $5 mil. equity investment in the privately held, Boulder, Colorado firm. B-D also will pay Nexagen royalties on sales of IVDs resulting from the collaboration. The technology has the "ability to generate huge libraries of up to 1 billion oligonucleotides and to select from those libraries a family of compounds that have the highest affinity and specificity for a given molecular target," according to Nexagen.