GVK Biosciences, the discovery research and development organisation based in Hyderabad, India, has announced a scientific collaboration with Endo Pharmaceuticals, the US company focused on high-value branded products for pain, urology, oncology and endocrinology.

The partnership, which is aimed at discovering novel small molecules targeting an unspecified protein, grew out of GVK Biosciences’ newly launched Early Discovery Assets (EDA) offering, which centres on pain and inflammation, the company noted.

Under the agreement, GVK Biosciences will use its discovery expertise to deliver a clinical candidate, while Endo will be responsible for developing and commercialisng any product that emerges from the collaboration.

With the EDA concept, GVK Biosciences is leveraging its internal expertise in computational chemistry, discovery biology and medicinal chemistry to build a portfolio of discovery-project assets for potential early stage partnering and co-development with life science companies.

Onconova partnership

Earlier this month, GVK entered into a partnership with Onconova Therapeutics, a US-based oncology specialist focused on discovering and developing novel small-molecule therapeutics against targets involved in signal transduction, cell cycles and DNA repair.  

Under that arrangement, Onconova is contributing two discovery targets with early chemical equity, while GVK Biosciences will use its multi-disciplinary discovery platform to advance these programmes through to lead optimisation and candidate selection for an Investigational New Drug application.

The collaboration with Onconova gives GVK a growing share of the relevant discovery and development programmes as they move towards clinical trials.