The FAST (fragments of active structures) lead generation technology involves crystallographic screening of lead-like drug fragments followed by structure-guided elaboration of the fragments by parallel chemical synthesis, guided by SGX' proprietary computational tools.

At the heart of the approach is the iterative determination of crystal structures for multiple target/compound bindings - in parallel with assays, computational design and synthesis - which is intended to provide good quality lead compounds with high binding affinities and low molecular weights.

The combinatorial nature of FAST provides access to expansive chemical diversity in the order of 160 million compounds, while requiring only a small number of compounds to be synthesised and screened.

Under the terms of the deal, which could be worth up to $68 million (€56m) in licensing and milestone payments to the small US firm, SGX will use FAST to generate leads for selected kinase and phosphatase targets provided by Serono.

SGX maintains that FAST can deliver leads against drug targets in as little as six months, well under the average timeframe for achieving this goal.

Serono will be responsible for the development and commercialisation of drug candidates resulting from the collaboration.