Saint Louis, MO and La Jolla, CA– July 18, 2013 –Sigma-Aldrich Corporation (Nasdaq: SIAL) today announced a partnership with The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) to fund research and provide immediate, day-of-publication access to TSRI researchers' discoveries for the synthesis and analysis of potential drugs. The partnership promises to eliminate months from the translation of cutting-edge chemistry into widespread applications for drug discovery.
The partnership includes six TSRI research labs led by Professors Phil Baran, Jin-Quan Yu, Benjamin Cravatt, Carlos Barbas, Phillip Dawson, and Nobel Laureate K. Barry Sharpless. TSRI will receive funds to be used to expand capacity for basic research.
TSRI approached Sigma-Aldrich to eliminate the delay between the invention of novel reagents and reliable, widespread access to those reagents for the translational research community. "The hurdles from bench to clinic, what the NIH calls the 'valley of death', are proving difficult to surmount, leaving numbers of potential therapeutic ideas trapped inside university doors. To clear these hurdles, it's critical to open a myriad of novel technologies, such as these from TSRI, to the whole translational research community," said Amanda Halford, Vice President, Academic Research at Sigma-Aldrich.
"This is the third major deal in our new targeted partnership strategy, following recent agreements with Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Bristol-Myers Squibb," said Scott Forrest, Vice President of Business Development at TSRI. "These multi-lab, multi-year alliances fund research and infrastructure in areas of mutual interest, creating a win-win situation for moving innovations into the marketplace. We are pleased to partner with the world's leading reagent company to accelerate the commercialization of new research tools for the scientific community."
Sigma-Aldrich and TSRI will partner to fund development of novel reagents from the six TSRI labs, which Sigma-Aldrich will commercialize exclusively via a master licensing agreement. This will allow unfettered access to new reagents by chemists and also scientists who do not have a background in chemical synthesis, which in the past limited their ability to implement novel reagents in their research.
Last year, TSRI and Sigma-Aldrich established a partnership to produce in bulk a toolkit of ten novel zinc-based salts discovered in the Baran lab, including the Baran difluoromethylation reagent that several large pharmaceutical companies immediately adopted for optimizing lead compounds.
"The partnership with TSRI will enable us to expand our portfolio through new innovations and product development," said Eric Green, Executive Vice President and President, Research at Sigma-Aldrich. "We believe this partnership reinforces our strategy of broadening our research portfolio of innovative products and tools used by the translational research community."
Publications of new reagents developed in these six TSRI labs will include a Sigma-Aldrich product number for simple reference.
While a number of collaborative partnerships have emerged between academic institutions and pharmaceutical companies, this is the first partnership of its kind between a research institute and a reagents company.
For more information, visit http://www.sigma-aldrich.com and http://www.scripps.edu
Cautionary Statement: The foregoing release contains forward-looking statements that can be identified by terminology such as "promises to," "will commercialize," "will create," or similar expressions, or by expressed or implied discussions regarding potential future revenues from products derived there from. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements reflect the current views of management regarding future events, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. There can be no guarantee that the partnership between Sigma-Aldrich and TSRI will assist the Company to achieve any particular levels of revenue in the future. In particular, management's expectations regarding products associated with the partnership between Sigma-Aldrich and TSRI could be affected by, among other things, unexpected regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; the Company's ability to obtain or maintain patent or other proprietary intellectual property protection; competition in general; government, industry and general public pricing pressures; the impact that the foregoing factors could have on the values attributed to the Company's assets and liabilities as recorded in its consolidated balance sheet, and other risks and factors referred to in Sigma-Aldrich's current Form 10-K on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Sigma-Aldrich is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.