AnalytiCon Discovery: Discovery and Development of New Classes of Anti-Cancer-Drugs
Discovery and Development of New Classes of Anti-Cancer-Drugs AnalytiCon Discovery and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Establish Drug Discovery Collaboration

Potsdam, Germany and New York, USA (July 23, 2004) - AnalytiCon Discovery GmbH (AnalytiCon) and the Experimental Therapeutics Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), announced today that they have entered into a multi year drug discovery, pre-clinical and clinical research collaboration to identify novel drug candidates in the area of oncology.

The collaboration will bring together AnalytiCon's unique collection of pure natural products with elucidated structures, natural product and medicinal chemistry expertise with MSKCC's cancer cell systems and biology, high-throughput screening technologies and clinical research expertise. MSKCC will undertake the identification and characterization of lead candidates from AnalytiCon's compound collection using MSKCC's proprietary assays and will jointly optimize obtained leads towards drug candidates. Commercial terms of the collaboration were not disclosed.

"The use of this novel compound collection and the collaboration with AnalytiCon will expand our capabilities in drug discovery and development; and will lead to a better understanding of cancer biology and its molecular targets. We look forward to an exciting and productive period of discovery with AnalytiCon," said Dr David A. Scheinberg, Chairman of Molecular Pharmacology and Chemistry and The Experimental Therapeutics Center at MSKCC.

"Typical screens using natural products involve multiple de-replication steps to find the active ingredient and most of the time we lose these active compounds along the process. Often the yields are too low for structural elucidation work; access to these highly purified and diverse libraries gives us a large advantage and would shorten the time it takes to confirm hits from screening," commented Dr Hakim Djaballah, head of High Throughput Screening at MSKCC. He added "The strategy for us is to build an outstanding library of commercially available molecules, and to then supplement it with natural products to enhance its diversity and lead to the discovery of novel scaffolds. These can be jointly developed with AnalytiCon as small molecule therapeutics for cancer."

The chemical diversity contained in AnalytiCon's natural product collection, offers effective alternatives to conventional synthetic compound screening efforts. By introducing pure natural products in the assays from the beginning, the problems associated with the classical extract based screening approaches are solved.

"We are pleased to initiate this drug discovery collaboration with the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center that will further validate our capabilities as a provider of novel small molecule compounds and develop AnalytiCon into a preferred First Class Natural Product Drug Discovery Company," said Dr. Lutz Müller-Kuhrt, CEO of AnalytiCon. "The uniqueness of MSKCC's scientific and technological approach powered by a highly qualified and organized R&D team constitutes a significant and - to our knowledge - most efficient opportunity for the discovery and development of new anti-cancer drugs."

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About AnalytiCon Discovery ( www.analyticon-discovery.com ):
The internationally operating AnalytiCon Discovery GmbH is a worldwide market-leader in the field of structurally fully elucidated natural product libraries. On the basis of its ready-to-screen technology in the field of natural products (MEGAbolite®) and natural product analogues (NatDiverseTM) the company enjoys an exceptional market positioning. This new technology replaces the costly, time-consuming and laborious practices of bioassay-guided extract fractionation and dereplication. This innovative concept has already resulted in the award of several substantial contracts to AnalytiCon from pharmaceutical corporations in Europe (Boehringer Ingelheim, Bayer), the US (amongst others Schering-Plough) and Japan (Takeda). Currently, AnalytiCon has direct access to roughly 15% of all known natural products worldwide as well as to an even higher number of unpublished structures in their pure and structurally fully elucidated form. The company is leading in the custom-design and development of combinatorial libraries based on rare natural products (NatDiverseTM tailor-made). In structure elucidation of natural products it can offer the highest throughput available on the market (up to 50 structures per day). AnalytiCon currently employs 60 members of staff at the Biotech Campus Potsdam-Hermannswerder. Thanks to its exceptional position the company is able to offer its clients a complete Supply-Chain-Management from the initial biomaterial to the final lead compound.

About Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center ( www.mskcc.org ):
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center is the world's oldest and largest institution devoted to prevention, patient care, research and education in cancer. Our scientists and clinicians generate innovative approaches to better understand, diagnose and treat cancer. Our specialists are leaders in biomedical research and in translating the latest research to advance the standard of cancer care worldwide.

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Further information:
Dr. Hajo Schiewe
Director of Business Development
AnalytiCon Discovery GmbH
Tel.: +49-331-2300-300
eMail: h.schiewe@ac-discovery.com 

Brantley Haigh
North American Business Development
AnalytiCon Discovery GmbH
Tel.: +1-213-924-1483
eMail: b.haigh@ac-discovery.com 


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