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.”

 

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