Clinical trial triggers $6m payment to Curis

Curis Inc. of Cambridge said it is in line to receive a $6 million milestone payment from Genentech Inc. as part of an ongoing collaboration that enables Genentech to develop and commercialize drugs based on Curis's intellectual property.

The milestone payment is triggered by the fact that Genentech treated the first patient in a Phase II clinical trial of GDC-0449, an orally-administered small molecule Hedgehog Pathway Inhibitor, as a single-agent therapy for patients with metastatic or locally advanced basal cell carcinoma, Curis said.

In 2003, Curis and California-based Genentech entered a collaboration that has the potential of yielding as much as $240 million in potential milestones payments, a Curis executive said.

To date, Curis has received about $35 million in various forms of payments from the Genentech collaboration, he added.

Curis is a drug development company committed to leveraging its innovative signaling pathway drug technologies to seek to create new medicines for cancer.

To read the company's press release, please click here.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)