BioCentury
ARTICLE | Strategy

Fielding armies of antibodies

July 10, 2000 7:00 AM UTC

MorphoSys AG believes that the company that can produce human antibodies in the largest numbers will prevail in the battle to supply antibodies to partners. MorphoSys (NMarkt:MOR) is advancing that goal through a deal with DuPont Pharmaceuticals Co. to develop AutoCAL, a robotic system to screen, clone and analyze MOR's HuCAL antibody library.

MorphoSys (Munich, Germany) also believes that the automation technology will free up resources to address investor criticisms that the company has fallen behind its competitors in the development of an in-house pipeline of therapeutic candidates. According to CEO Simon Moroney, an undetermined number of staff will be freed up by AutoCAL to work on drug discovery for MOR's own account...