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Hybrigenics
and Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica announce screening and discovery
collaboration
Hybrigenics' first drug
development project using natural products boosts the functional
proteomics company's cancer drug discovery efforts
Paris, May 17, 2004 -- Hybrigenics SA, the pathway-based drug discovery company, announces today a collaboration agreement with the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (SIMM), the Chinese Academy of Science. The agreement offers an unique opportunity to identify novel therapeutics by tapping into the vast universe of traditional Chinese medicine using a combination of SIMM's knowledge base of several thousands plant extracts and Hybrigenics' expertise in screening and target validation. Under the terms of the cost-sharing agreement, Hybrigenics will supply targets and a screening assay, and SIMM will provide access to its library of plant extracts based in the Chinese National Center for Drug Screening. Hybrigenics and SIMM will collaborate on sample screening, hit finding, lead identification and optimization, as well as related preclinical studies. This partnership will bring together Hybrigenics' high throughput protein interaction mapping - a cutting-edge bioinformatics platform, cell function analysis, and proprietary small molecule screening technologies - and SIMM's expertise in natural product chemistry, thereby enhancing the probability of discovering novel therapeutic agents. "Hybrigenics' know-how and discovery capabilities should enable us to further explore our natural product library with an aim of developing new drugs in oncology," said Prof. Jian Ding, Deputy Director of SIMM. "This collaboration with the prestigious Shanghai Institute for Materia Medica is extremely valuable to Hybrigenics in our drug discovery program," said Prof. A. Donny Strosberg, CEO of Hybrigenics. "This agreement should help us advance our endeavor in the development of novel drugs against cancer."
"Hybrigenics is an
ideal partner to collaborate with the Shanghai Institute of Materia
Medica by integrating screening with chemistry and pharmacology, because
Hybrigenics brings the state-of-the-art target discovery technologies
while SIMM contributes more than two thousand years of traditional
pharmacopoeia which may provide highly druggable lead candidates,"
said Paul M. Vanhoutte, Distinguished Visiting Professor and Director of
the Biopharmaceutical Development Centre of the University of Hong Kong,
and an Adjunct Professor at SIMM.
About Hybrigenics (www.hybrigenics.com) Hybrigenics, Paris, France, is a pathway-based drug discovery company that identifies and validates new drug targets and therapeutic molecules via high throughput protein interaction mapping, a cutting-edge bioinformatics platform, cellular functional analysis, and proprietary small molecule screening technologies. As a key player of the post-genomic era, the company analyzes specific biological complexes and networks of interacting proteins (so called "pathways"), from which it selects and validates novel target proteins, which are then used to identify small molecule drug candidates. Because most drugs act on proteins or are proteins themselves, Hybrigenics' approach shortens the path between genomics and drug development. The company has internal drug discovery programs in the area of Cancer and Viral Diseases and established strategic alliances in these fields with the Curie Institute, the Pasteur Institute, the French AIDS Agency (ANRS), and INSERM. The company has also collaborated with several industrial partners including Incyte Corp., Lynx Therapeutics Inc., Merck Sharp & Dohme Ltd., Oxford Glycosciences, Servier and XTL Biopharmaceuticals Ltd. Hybrigenics' headquarters and laboratories are located in Paris, France, and in Utrecht, Netherlands, where it acquired Semaia as a wholly-owned subsidiary. Since its creation in 1997, the Company has raised a total of EUR 47M in seed and venture fundings.
About the Shanghai Institute
of Materia Medica (www.simm.ac.cn)
Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (SIMM) was established in 1932 and is a comprehensive research organization for drug discovery and development affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. With a staff of about 400 including more than 100 senior scientists composed of both chemistry and biology departments, its main mission is drug innovation through studies on structure-activity relationship of biologically active substances. The major research fields include natural product chemistry, medicinal chemistry, combinatorial chemistry, drug screening, pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, toxicology and computer-aided drug design, etc.
Various up-to-date
technologies are used to identify lead compounds for in-depth studies on
their effects on cancer, neurological disorders, diabetes, immune
modulation, cardiovascular diseases, etc.
For further information,
please contact:
Hybrigenics S.A.
Dominique Granger
Tel: +33 1 58 10 38 10
Andrew Lloyd &
Associates Ltd
Andrew Lloyd/Zoe Quinn
Tel: +44 1273 675 100
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