Licensed library compounds

An example of a leading chemical CRO is Albany Molecular (AMRI). It had chemistry revenues 184 million in 2005. AMRI does organic synthesis and chemistry development, supported by computational chemistry for molecular modeling, with computer-assisted drug design. Furthermore, it offers different types of libraries custom, semiexclusive, focused, and natural products. Finally, AMRI conducts its own proprietary R D aimed at licensing preclinical and clinical compounds. 

Combinatorial chemistry, or diversity-based drug discovery, is one of the fastest developing fields of research. The ability to make and screen vast numbers of compounds by new methods has resulted in a new segment of the research industry. With this new technology comes new questions of patentability. Is a library of compounds patentable Who is the inventor How can it be licensed ... 

A problem that often arises for the diversity-based discovery company that wishes to outlicense its technology is the many partners problem. The company may want to maximize the value of its libraries by licensing use of the libraries to other companies, or collaborating with other companies for drug discovery. Ideally, the company would like to license the same libraries (it may have only a few) to as many third parties as possible. However, the third parties are likely to require exclusive rights to any lead compounds identified, which leads to the problem. 

Another problem sometimes occurs where diversity-based company A has granted exclusive rights to license compounds in its libraries to several other companies, and two or more of these partners identify and claim the same compound. This can happen where partners have defined their fields of exclusivity by different mechanisms (e.g., partner B claims IL-IOR antagonists , while partner C claims dihydropyridine derivatives , or immune modulators ), or where the selected targets respond to the same compound (e.g., where new, poorly characterized receptors turn out to be related or identical). When this happens, one has partners converging on the same compound (or similar compounds). 

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