French biotech firm has GenOway signed a five year master service agreement with Boehringer Ingelheim, to provide the firm with customised rat lines tailored to its research needs. No other details were forthcoming.

GenOway's focus is the development of genetically modified (mouse and rat) animal models aimed at enhancing in vivo research projects. The firm said it combines transgenesic technologies such as pronuclear microinjection, knock-out, knock-in, knock-down, point mutation and humanisation, with patented technologies adapted to target validation, in vivo drug screening, drug efficacy and safety testing programmes.

Gilles de Poncins, chief financial officer (CFO) of GenOway said that his firm now has collaborations with seven of the major worldwide drug research and development laboratories.

"In addition to an intensification of our existing activities in Europe and North America, we hope to announce some exciting news on the Asian market in the near future", added Kader Thiam, vice president of Transgenic Technologies at GenOway.

Recently, Evotec has formed two new business relationships, the first of which will see it working for Spermatech to identify small molecule therapeutics for its project to develop a male contraceptive.

Through the study of the physiology of sperm motility, Spermatech said it has identified biological targets that could used to develop non-hormonal reversible male contraceptives.

Under the deal, Evotec will use its technologies in assay development, high throughput screening and NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) screening to identify inhibitors of the sperm specific target protein.

Screening will be performed with Evotec's library of 250,000 drug-like compounds to identify those that reduce sperm motility. In addition, compounds that promote target activity may be evaluated as supporters of male fertility, the firm said.

The second deal the company has formed is with Japan's Ono Pharmaceutical, whereby Evotec will use its proprietary drug discovery technology, evolution, to undertake fragment based drug discovery to identify and optimise novel, small molecular weight compounds targeting a protease of Ono's choosing.

Ono said it will pay Evotec initial payments, research funding and success-based milestones based on the research progress.

Fragment-based drug discovery is a method of drug design by selecting small molecular weight compounds (fragments) which interact with specific sites of the target protein and subsequent linkage and modification of the fragments using protein X-ray crystallography. It enables speedy and efficient discovery of compounds which strongly interact with target proteins.

Meanwhile, another services firm, Cenix BioScience, has also recently forged two new drug discovery arrangements.

The German firm will assist AstraZeneca with the discovery and validation of oncology drug targets.

The project will involve a high-throughput-RNAi screen using an assay strategy co-designed by the two firms, combining high-throughput applications of RNAi-based gene silencing, with high-content phenotypic analyses in cultured human cells.

Cenix' CEO Christophe Echeverri said he hopes the project will lead on to other collaborations with the drug giant.

The firm has also just signed a framework research agreement to support CellCentric, a biotechnology company researching epigenetic control mechanisms, through cell-based validation of novel therapeutic drug targets for oncology.

The company will apply the same high-throughput-RNAi screen for the in vitro validation of several candidate drug targets chosen by CellCentric to offer high therapeutic anti-cancer potential.

Cenix said it will also apply its multi-parametric microscopy-based assays to generate detailed insights into the cellular functions and loss-of-function phenotypes of analysed genes across multiple cell lines.

"Such RNAi datasets, now widely favoured throughout the industry, offer a highly predictive and cost-effective basis for discovering and prioritising targets for therapeutic drug development in a wide range of disease fields," the firm said.