Durg giant Eli Lilly has extended a drug discovery contract with Galapagos' services arm BioFocus DPI until the end of 2008, in a deal worth up to $1.2m.

Under the terms of the agreement, BioFocus DPI will screen certain compounds provided by Lilly against selected assays in quarterly screening regimes to identify active compounds and provide selectivity information to Lilly for its nuclear hormone receptor research program.

The two firms have been working together since March 2005 to discover new compounds that target nuclear hormone receptors, a class of proteins that, when bound to specific sequences of DNA, serve as on-off switches for controlling the development and differentiation of skin, bone, and behavioral centers in the brain, as well as the continual regulation of reproductive tissues.

In other news, Argenta Discovery has inked a fee-for-service agreement with Antisoma under which the two firms will work together to develop improved molecules for Antisoma's programme of telomere targeting agents (TTAs).

Antisoma will use Argenta's expertise in medicinal chemistry, computer-aided drug design, molecular biology, biochemistry, assay development and in vitro screening, during the course of the collaboration.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the agreement does provide options to expand the relationship.

Meanwhile, ChemDiv has announced the availability of a new chemistry eCommerce service that enabling online structure searching for 500,000 chemicals in its commercial library - the world's largest.

It has been developed in conjunction with eMolecules, a provider of the world's largest chemical structures search engine.

The service includes structure and substructure searches, shopping cart selection of structures and quantities, checkout and order management, "making the process of buying molecules as easy as buying books online", the firm said.

Nikolay Savchuk, ChemDiv's president and CEO said: "With eMolecules, scientists can instantly explore the full depth and breadth of extensive novel chemical libraries, using the web to accelerate procurement and drug discovery."

"Our objective is to enable chemical professionals around the globe to gain better access to innovative molecules delivered to their doorsteps in a matter of days," said Klaus Gubernator, eMolecules CEO.