Galapagos assists kinase research in Cellzome deal
collaboration in which the two companies are to concentrate on
kinases, a popular target for pharmaceutical therapies for cancer
and inflammatory diseases.
The alliance demonstrates again the importance of kinases, which function as control switches for many biochemical pathways inside cells. Kinase activities can become deregulated by numerous molecular and signalling events, thus contributing to both the onset and progression of diseases.
Galapagos latest deal reinforces its dominant position as a provider of drug discovery services, which include target discovery to the delivery of candidate drugs. The deal closely follows that which Galapagos made with Discovery Partners International (DPI), in which it acquired for €4.25m.
Under the terms of this new agreement, Galapagos' service division BioFocus DPI gives Cellzome access to its SoftFocus kinase libraries and provides biological screening and chemistry know-how to find inhibitors of Cellzome's kinase targets.
In addition, BioFocus DPI receives an upfront payment for the library access as well as research fees.
Cellzome has developed an interesting proteomics technology, Kinobeads, which allows the screening of kinases directly in extracts from cells or tissues.
This method allows the screening of BioFocus' DPI libraries for the identification of potent inhibitors against key inflammatory kinases in their physiological context.
"We chose to work with BioFocus DPI because of the quality of their SoftFocus kinase libraries and their specific expertise in screening," said Tim Edwards, CEO at Cellzome.
"This has allowed us to transfer our Kinobeads assay rapidly, and begin to identify small molecule inhibitors of particular kinase targets."
The role of kinases in disease proliferation and indeed, drug therapy cannot be overemphasised having been implicated in many diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and neurological disorders.
It is estimated that kinase malfunction contributes to more than 400 diseases and that greater than 20 per cent of the drug discovery efforts are focused on protein kinase inhibitors.
Researchers require technologies that will enable them to rapidly develop assays that provide data for these potentially important kinase inhibitors.
