Collaboration to Develop Drugs for Bladder Cancer

A collaboration for the discovery and development of novel drugs for the treatment of urologic cancers has been announced by UroGene, S.A. (Ivry, France) and SGX (Structural GenomiX, Inc., San Diego, CA, USA).

The companies will jointly develop small molecule inhibitors against urologic cancer kinase targets. The SGX FAST (fragments of active structure) lead discovery technology will be combined with UroGene's expertise in target validation and clinical studies for urologic indications. SGX will have exclusive commercialization rights in North America to drugs developed, while Urogene will have exclusive rights within Europe.

By accessing highly annotated prostate and bladder tissues from its clinical network. UroGene' scientists have discovered, validated, and developed innovative drug targets. UroGene has also developed a unique chemistry-driven strategy and expertise to deliver small molecule chemotherapeutics on those targets. SGX's FAST technology relies on libraries of synthetically enabled fragments developed by SGX to ensure rapid hit-to-lead optimization, and draws on SGX's expertise in high-throughput co-crystallography , computational scoring, and automated parallel synthesis.

"Bladder cancer has a high rate of recurrence, characterized by aggressive tumors and a poor prognosis. Current therapies for bladder cancer and recurrent episodes deserve major improvement both in terms of increasing efficiency and decreasing side effects,” said Dr. Hughes Bienayme, Ph.D., CSO, UroGene.





Related Links:
UroGene
SGX