Partnership to accelerate human protein kinase drug discovery
7 March 2011
UK company IOTA Pharmaceuticals, Danish company KinaseDetect
and Swedish company SARomics Biostructures have formed the KINOMED
Partnership to accelerate human protein Kinase drug discovery.
The partnership is funded by the Eurostars program of the European
Union.
Kinase production, kinase assay development, kinase crystal
structure determination, kinase fragment library construction, hit
finding and optimisation, in silico screening, kinase biochemical
and biophysical screening, structure- and ligand-based drug design
and medicinal chemistry services are all included within a single,
state-of-the-art offering.
“We are excited to be working with IOTA and KinaseDetect. Both
companies are led by world-known researchers with impressive track
records within the kinase and kinase drug discovery fields,” said Dr
Derek Logan, CSO of SARomics Biostructures.
Prof. Olaf-Georg Issinger, director of KinaseDetect, commented,
“Structure-based drug design in combination with fragment-based lead
discovery is a powerful combination in modern drug discovery. We are
collaborating with IOTA Pharmaceuticals and SARomics Biostructures
in developing a service platform to provide the pharmaceutical
industry with off-the-shelf three-dimensional structures of kinases
and their complexes with novel lead compounds. The provision of such
an integrated service platform will greatly accelerate the drug
discovery process for this important class of drugs.”
Dr. David Bailey, Director and Co-founder of IOTA, said,
“Fragment-based drug discovery at IOTA combines identification of
fragments with high ligand efficiency with the power of
structure-based drug design, rapidly optimising ligand binding and
selectivity in drug-like molecules. The KINOMED Partnership between
KinaseDetect, SARomics and IOTA will develop these leads to produce
a new generation of kinase therapeutics.”