Aquapharm in new accords with Dr. Reddy’s

Licensing agreement

Scottish marine biotechnology company Aquapharm Biodiscovery – spun out of research at St Andrews University, Scotland, in 2000 – has announced the signing of a new commercial licence agreement and an extension of an existing research and development licence agreement with Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Limited. The commercial licence covers selected strains from the Aquapharm library of novel marine micro-organisms.

These strains will be used to generate commercial biocatalysts for specific applications in the manufacture of pharmaceutical intermediates at the Dr. Reddy’s R&D site at Cambridge, UK. This site was recently acquired by Dr. Reddy’s Custom Pharmaceutical Services business unit.

Under these agreements, Aquapharm will receive milestone payments as well as royalties on commercialisation of the product by Dr. Reddy’s. Further financial details of the agreement are not being disclosed.

Dr Andrew Mearns Spragg, CEO of Aquapharm said, “It is highly satisfying that the collaboration we entered into with Dr. Reddy’s R&D site at Cambridge in 2006 has had its first successes and will generate near-term revenues for Aquapharm. We look forward to continuing to work together with Dr. Reddy’s Cambridge R&D site to identify further novel enzymes from our marine microorganism library.”

Marcel Velterop, Vice President, Dr Reddy’s Custom Pharmaceutical Services – Europe, added, “The Aquapharm library is proving a valuable resource for the Cambridge R&D site in developing economically attractive and sustainable biocatalytic processes for the production of pharmaceutical intermediates. Working together with Aquapharm we are confident of further successes in exploiting this unique and diverse collection of microorganisms.”