Melior Discovery signs option agreement with Pfizer

Melior Discovery, Inc. announced today that it has signed an option agreement that provides Pfizer Inc the exclusive right to negotiate a license to MLR-1023, Melior's drug candidate for Type II diabetes.

In exchange, Pfizer agreed to make an undisclosed payment to Melior and provide access to certain data it owns related to MLR-1023. In addition, Melior agreed to utilize its in-vivo theraTRACE indications discovery platform to evaluate the activity of selected Pfizer compounds in partnership with Pfizer.

"This is the second collaboration initiated with Pfizer in the last 18 months and we look forward to this expansion to our productive research and development relationship," said Andrew Reaume, PhD, President and CEO of Melior.

Melior Discovery is leading the transformation of pharmaceutical drug repositioning with its unique theraTRACE platform of multiplexed in vivo models. It is using this capability to both build an internal pipeline of development candidates as well as sharing this capability with pharma and biotechnology company partners. In the former case, Melior is identifying "privileged" compounds that have been discontinued by others which it identifies through a close working relationship with Dr. Christopher Lipinski. In its partnered arrangements, Melior offers pharmaceutical partners an approach to expand their late-stage pipelines with safe, high-quality drug candidates.