Monheim, Germany
July 19, 2006
Bayer CropScience AG
and Magellan
BioScience Group, Saint Petersburg, Florida, USA, have
announced today that the two companies have entered into a
multi-year research agreement to identify novel crop protection
candidates from marine microbial sources. Financial terms of the
transaction were not disclosed.
This agreement
will bring together Magellan’s first class collection of
marine-derived natural products as well as their natural product
and chemistry expertise with Bayer’s agrochemical research and
development expertise. Bayer CropScience will undertake the
characterization of lead candidates from Magellan’s collection
using its proprietary assays and will optimize obtained leads
towards crop protection candidates. In addition to its
libraries, Magellan will also provide Bayer CropScience access
to its various chemistry technologies.
"Natural products always played an important role in our
discovery program for new active ingredients" stated Dr.
Alexander Klausener, Head of Research at Bayer CropScience.
"Historically, we were concentrating on secondary metabolites
from terrestrian microorganisms as well as plants. With the
cooperation with Magellan we add marine producers as an
additional source which we felt necessary to close the gap with
respect to biological diversity. We forsee a fruitful as well as
delightful cooperation with Magellan BioScience, a young and
promising company in natural products research."
“We are excited to initiate this agreement with Bayer
CropScience that will further validate our capabilities as a
provider of novel small molecules and develop Magellan into a
preferred First Class Research & Discovery Company,” said Dr.
Todd R. Daviau, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Magellan. “The
state-of-the-art scientific and technological approach of Bayer
CropScience powered by their highly qualified and organized
research team constitutes a significant opportunity for the
discovery and development of new crop protection agents.”
“The screening of our novel extract collection and this
arrangement with Bayer will expand our capabilities in discovery
and development” said Dr. John M. Cronan Jr., Vice President and
Chief Science Officer (CSO) of Magellan. “The biochemical
diversity contained in our natural product collection offers
effective alternatives to combinatorial derived compound
collections. We look forward to an exciting and productive
period of discovery with Bayer CropScience.”
Bayer CropScience, a subsidiary of Bayer AG with annual sales
of about EUR 6 billion, is one of the world’s leading innovative
crop science companies in the areas of crop protection,
non-agricultural pest control, seeds and plant biotechnology.
The company offers an outstanding range of products and
extensive service backup for modern, sustainable agriculture and
for non-agricultural applications. Bayer CropScience has a
global workforce of about 19,000 and is represented in more than
120 countries. |
