A joint announcement was made by PharmAkea Therapeutics Inc and Bay City Capital LLC was made today. This was to inform everyone of the strategic collaboration between with Celgene Corporation designed to utilize the drug discovery platform of PharmAkea to generate therapies specifically targetting cancerous and fibrotic diseases.

The strategic collaboration would require a financial commitment of USD35 million from Celgene Corporation to be provided to PharmAkea for the three years of the collaboration. There is an option to extend the agreement through additional funding. On the other hand, Bay City Capital invested USD10 million in Series A equity financing. This would also provide Celgene an equity shareholding in PharmAkea with an exclusive option to acquire the full company.

According to Celgene Corporation Executive Vice President and President of Research and Early Development Tom Daniel MD, "The very strong team at PharmAkea is led by drug hunting professionals with a proven track record of delivering important medicines to patients. As our commitment to immune and inflammatory diseases expands, this investment partnered with Bay City Capital represents an extension of our commitment to develop innovative approaches and complementary strategic aasets for high therapeutic impact."