US drug discovery company Chiromics has entered into collaborations with two of the pharmaceutical industry’s biggest players.
First up, the Princeton, New Jersey-based group, founded in 2009, has signed a pact with GlaxoSmithKline to discover novel classes of small molecules against certain biological targets. The collaboration will use Chiromics’ ‘cascade catalysis’ technology which allows for the creation of “accessible complexity”.
This produces “a diverse collection of molecules that is more complex than and differentiated from currently existing small molecule collections, while retaining drug-like properties, the ability to develop structure-activity relationships and ease of re-synthesis”, Chiromics claims. The firm’s founder, David MacMillan, added that the collaboration with GSK “further validates that our chemical technology and discovery platform is a potentially valuable gateway to a new set of small molecules for drug discovery”.
The second deal is with Bristol-Myers Squibb and grants the US major a non-exclusive license for use of Chiromics’ chemical compound library and exclusive rights to a proprietary chemical compound collection. It also involves a screening collaboration.
No financial terms for either pact were disclosed.
