European Biopharmaceutical Companies Launch Anticancer Drug Project

Two European biopharmaceutical companies are joining forces in an intensive effort to develop a new series of anticancer drugs.

ZoBio (Leiden, The Netherlands) will be applying its proprietary TINS technology to screen a library of drug fragments for specific binding to the desired conformation of the target protein.

TINS is a powerful approach that has been validated on a wide range of targets including viral proteins, proteases, kinases, protein-protein interaction targets, molecular chaperones, and membrane proteins. TINS uses a single sample of the target and a reference protein that have been immobilized on Sepharose-based resin. Fragments to be assayed for binding are injected as mixtures of between three and nine compounds. Binding is detected by a reduction in the height of the NMR signals of a compound that specifically binds to the target. Comparison of the NMR spectra of the fragments in the presence of the target and reference proteins directly reveals the identity of the binding ligand.

ZoBio offers its proprietary TINS technology for ligand screening studies on its own, highly validated fragment library or the customer’s. A typical TINS discovery and characterization/validation project is completed in one to two months.

ZoBio's partner in the new project is Actelion Ltd. (Allschwil, Switzerland), a company that has demonstrated global leadership in the field of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) therapy. Actelion is known for a strong and effective worldwide specialty commercial organization, a highly productive discovery capability, and a unique company culture that focuses on delivering innovative medicines that improve patient’s lives.

Dr. Gregg Siegal, CSO of ZoBio said, “We are proud that Actelion, a company with such success in bringing innovative drugs to the market, has selected ZoBio as a partner. We feel that this collaboration has a great chance to succeed where others have failed.”

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ZoBio
Actelion Ltd.