Vernalis Plc has received a milestone payment of $1.5 million from Novartis in connection with the start of a Phase 1 clinical trial of a compound to treat cancer. The payment stems from a 2004 research collaboration between Vernalis and the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research under which Novartis agreed to fund research into a number of candidate inhibitors of a protein that plays an important role in the proliferation of cancer cells.
