Boehringer Ingelheim enters strategic collaboration agreement to support Molecular Partner's proprietary pipeline

Boehringer Ingelheim's biopharmaceutical contract manufacturing business and Molecular Partners have entered into a strategic manufacturing collaboration.

Boehringer Ingelheim's biopharmaceutical contract manufacturing business and Molecular Partners have entered into a strategic manufacturing collaboration. Under the terms of the agreement, Boehringer Ingelheim will be responsible for the generation of E. coli production strains and the manufacture of tox and clinical stage material for multiple DARPin® products supplying Molecular Partners proprietary DARPin® pipeline.

Simon Sturge, Corporate Senior Vice President Boehringer Ingelheim Biopharmaceuticals commented: "We are happy to have entered into this collaboration with Molecular Partners as we believe the DARPin® platform will play an important role in the development of next generation antibody like proteins. This agreement reflects the strategy of Boehringer Ingelheim and its new brand Boehringer Ingelheim BioXcellence™ to be dedicated and committed to the development of highly innovative molecule platforms and projects."

Christian Zahnd, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Molecular Partners said: "Boehringer Ingelheim Biopharmaceuticals is the ideal partner to support us with highest quality GMP production capacity. This collaboration is a further commitment that Molecular Partners establishes a strong proprietary DARPin® pipeline and it will allow us to develop DARPin® based products for patients in need at highest quality and speed."

"We entered into this collaboration after the successful case study. Both monospecific and multispecific DARPins® could be expressed intracellularely in E. coli as soluble proteins at high titers and were successfully purified to highest standards," stated Lothar Halmer, Vice President Operations Microbial and Site Head of Boehringer Ingelheim Austria. "We are delighted to be able to work with Molecular Partners to support their clinical development strategies for their DARPins® pipeline."

About DARPins®

DARPins® are a new generation of target-binding proteins which can be isolated from large libraries. The DARPin® platform is an efficient product generating engine creating differentiated and high quality drugs at unmatched speed. Each drug candidate profits from a wide range of beneficial biophysical properties, including high stability and solubility, high yield and low-cost microbial production. Also, DARPins®show very high potencies and pharmacokinetic (PK) profiles tailored to the demand of the application, ranging from minutes to weeks. DARPins® can be effortlessly combined into multispecific drug candidates without compromising biophysical and development characteristics. This rapid and robust generation of multispecific DARPins® allows new combinatorial approaches in exploring target biology.

About Molecular Partners AG

Molecular Partners is a privately-owned biotech company focusing on the research, development and commercialization of a novel class of biological drugs known as DARPins®. The company is committed to create medicines for diseases with unmet medical need and to dramatically improve existing therapies. DARPins® combine the high specificity, selectivity and safety of monoclonal antibodies with many advantages of small molecules, including high stability and low-cost production and adding the ability of combining multiple specificities. Molecular Partners has established a strong DARPin® pipeline which is well differentiated from standard therapeutic approaches. Molecular Partners is focusing on DARPin® drugs in inflammation, oncology, ophthalmology and other disease areas. The most advanced DARPin (MP0112/ AGN 150998) is in phase IIb clinical development and has been partnered with Allergan. The internal pipeline is expanded by partnered programs with leading pharmaceutical companies. Molecular Partners has established collaborations with Allergan, Janssen Biotech and others. The company is backed by a strong syndicate of investors and holds a strong patent estate covering all DARPin® applications.

About Boehringer Ingelheim

The Boehringer Ingelheim group is one of the world’s 20 leading pharmaceutical companies. Headquartered in Ingelheim, Germany, it operates globally with 145 affiliates and more than 44,000 employees. Since it was founded in 1885, the family-owned company has been committed to researching, developing, manufacturing and marketing novel medications of high therapeutic value for human and veterinary medicine. In 2011, Boehringer Ingelheim achieved net sales of about 13.2 billion Euro.

Boehringer Ingelheim Biopharma Contract Manufacturing is now represented by its new brand Boehringer Ingelheim BioXcellence™. As a leading biopharmaceutical contract manufacturer with more than 35 years of experience - the company has brought 19 biopharmaceutical products to market. Boehringer Ingelheim BioXcellence™ offers tailor-made contract development and manufacturing services to the biopharmaceutical industry, providing the entire production technology chain from DNA to fill and finish under one roof at its facilities in Biberach (Germany), Vienna (Austria) and Fremont (USA).

Boehringer Ingelheim BioXcellence™ can secure product supply throughout the entire product lifecycle-transferring customer projects at any stage, delivering to almost any scale and thereby makes outsourcing easy.