Domainex Announcement: Innovative biopharmaceutical company, Domainex, announces asthma treatment collaboration with St George's Hospital Medical School and The University of Manchester

London and Cambridge, UK, 25th June 2009. Domainex Ltd, St George’s University of London, and The University of Manchester today announced that they are collaborating on a new drug discovery programme to provide a better treatment for asthma. Domainex, specialists in drug discovery solutions, will provide lead optimisation services for an exciting asthma research programme being undertaken at St George’s. The total contract value for Domainex exceeds £1.5 million in research fees over two years.

Scientists led by Clive Robinson, Professor in Respiratory Cell Science at St George’s, working in collaboration with Professor David Garrod at Manchester and a team from Domainex, have discovered drug-like compounds that inhibit Der p1, an enzyme that triggers asthma attacks. St George’s University of London and The University of Manchester have recently been awarded a £4 million research grant from the Wellcome Trust's Seeding Drug Discovery Initiative to take this research programme forward.

Domainex will apply its LeadBuilder technology - which uses state-of-the-art virtual screening capability to select chemical compounds suitable for rapid progression - and its medicinal chemistry expertise to assist the St George’s team to develop a drug candidate to take into clinical trials.

Founded in 2002, Domainex specializes in the provision of protein science and medicinal chemistry services to large pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and to academic research groups. The company is also developing a pipeline of pre-clinical drugs and targets.

Eddy Littler, Chief Executive Officer of Domainex, said: “This collaboration with St George’s University of London and The University of Manchester demonstrates Domainex’s core expertise in computational and medicinal chemistry. It is also a testament to our commitment to the support of translational research in academia. The combination of LeadBuilder and our medicinal chemistry expertise creates a powerful drug discovery tool.”

Professor Clive Robinson said: “The innovative services provided by Domainex’s scientists, together with the support of the Wellcome Trust, will help us to accelerate the development of our exciting anti-asthma compounds.”

Professor David Garrod said: “This is a most exciting development in a productive on-going collaboration that promises to bring real benefit to the millions who suffer from respiratory allergies.”

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Editors Notes
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About Domainex
Domainex is a drug discovery company that provides services, including computational and medicinal chemistry, gene cloning and expression, to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and to academic research groups. It also offers a unique propriety technology known as Combinatorial Domain Hunting which is a patented method for expressing difficult protein targets. LeadBuilder is the proprietary lead generation platform that has been developed by Domainex to provide unusually rapid and cost-effective access to high-quality hits. As such, it is particularly well-suited to the needs of groups engaged in Translational Research, and emerging biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. Domainex is also developing a pipeline of pre-clinical drugs.

Domainex is based on the Cambridge Science Park, England and has offices in the London Bioscience Innovation Centre.

For more information see: www.domainex.co.uk

About St George’s University of London
About St George’s University of London is dedicated to promoting by excellence in teaching, clinical practice and research, the prevention, treatment and understanding of disease. The college is recognised globally for the quality of its research, with a high reputation in areas such as infection, diseases of the heart and circulation, cell signalling and epidemiology. Other areas of expertise include genetics, health and social care sciences and mental health. The college provides training to a full range of more than 2,600 healthcare and sciences students on one site. It offers courses in medicine and biomedical sciences, as well as midwifery, nursing, physiotherapy, radiography and social work in conjunction with Kingston University.

For more information: www.sgul.ac.uk

About The Centre for Enterprise and Innovation
About The Centre for Enterprise and Innovation facilitates collaborations with business and promotes the development of innovative ideas and technologies. This includes forming academic and commercial partnerships, aiding contract research, offering technologies for license and providing expert consultancy and clinical trials activity.

For more information: http://www.sgul.ac.uk/business/enterprise-centre-1 

About the University of Manchester
The University of Manchester, a member of the Russell Group, was ranked with the elite group of research universities traditionally formed by the triangle of Oxford, Cambridge and London in the recent Research Assessment Exercise 2008. Its external research income is £263 million.

For more information: www.manchester.ac.uk 

About The University of Manchester Intellectual Property Ltd (UMIP)
The University of Manchester Intellectual Property Limited (UMIP) is the managing agent of The University of Manchester for intellectual property commercialisation. UMIP's role is to enhance the reputation of the University's intellectual property development through successful spin-out and licensing business activities.

Since its inception in October 2004, UMIP has set up sixteen spin-out companies, concluded over 80 licence deals and raised more than £130 million in investment capital. It currently has over 100 projects in its portfolio at various stages of development. A number of the spin-out companies have received national and regional enterprise awards.

For more information: www.umip.com

About the Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust is the largest charity in the UK. It funds innovative biomedical research, in the UK and internationally, spending over €700 million each year to support the brightest scientists with the best ideas. The Wellcome Trust’s Seeding Drug Discovery initiative aims to bridge the funding gap in early stage drug discovery, assisting researchers in academia or companies to take forward projects in small molecule therapeutics that will be the springboard for further research and development by the biotech and pharmaceutical industry.

For more information: www.wellcome.ac.uk