press release archive

Rigel Announces That Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development Extends Collaboration To Discover New Cancer Therapeutics And Diagnostics

South San Francisco, CA - January 07, 2002

Rigel Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today announced that its oncology drug discovery collaboration with Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development, L.L.C. has been extended for another two years.

Under the terms of the extension agreement, Rigel will continue to validate targets discovered during the collaboration. Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development will conduct high-throughput screening and medicinal chemistry to identify small molecule drugs that modulate validated targets selected for drug discovery.

"Rigel’s drug discovery and target validation engine is successfully identifying targets for small molecule screening at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development," said James M.Gower, President and Chief Executive Officer of Rigel. "This collaboration has consistently met its research objectives, and we expect it to yield additional viable targets that can be used as the foundation for the development of therapeutic, predictive and diagnostic products for the management of cancer."

Rigel’s collaboration with Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development is based on the discovery and validation of targets directed at the cell cycle, a series of biological events that each cell undergoes in order to divide. In mutated cells, the genetic "switches" that regulate this process are disabled, which can lead to uncontrolled cell division and proliferation (cancer). The targets selected by Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development may enable the development of new agents that can alter the abnormal cell cycle regulation process or induce apoptosis.

Under the agreement that began in January 1999, Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development provided research funding and milestone payments in exchange for an exclusive, worldwide royalty-bearing license to cell cycle-based products resulting from the collaboration. The terms of the extension include continued research support for two years and an additional future development milestone for Rigel.

JP Morgan H&Q Webcast Details

Mr. Gower will present today at the 20th Annual JP Morgan H&Q Healthcare Conference in San Francisco at 9:00 am PST. The presentation will be webcast live and can be accessed fifteen minutes prior by visiting the Company's website www.rigel.com and clicking on the "What's New" section of the site. The archived presentation will be available online for sixty days.

Rigel Pharmaceuticals is a drug discovery and development company that uses advanced functional genomics tools to discover novel drug targets. Rigel's technology is designed to identify molecules which play an important role in regulating a human cell's response to disease by testing a very large number of proteins in a very large number of cells to determine which proteins will change the cell's response to the disease. Rigel currently has programs in asthma/allergy, autoimmunity, transplant rejection, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, chronic bronchitis, cancerous tumor growth and hepatitis C. Rigel has multi-year collaborations with Pfizer Inc., Cell Genesys, Inc., Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development, and Novartis Pharma A.G. Rigel is based in South San Francisco, California.

Statements included in this press release that are not historical in nature are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Rigel cautions readers that forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements due to the risks and factors identified in Rigel's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2000 and other filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time. The information in this press release is current as of its release date. Rigel does not intend to update the forward-looking information contained in this press release.