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Inpharmatica's first contract
with GSK is fourth publicly announced ADME deal
London, UK, March 22, 2004 --
Inpharmatica Ltd, the selective drug discovery company, announced today that
it has entered into an agreement with pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline
(GSK) to access its ADME (absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion)
technologies.
Under the agreement, Inpharmatica will apply its proprietary in silico ADME technology to an undisclosed number of GSK's drug discovery programmes in the UK and Europe.
Inpharmatica has pioneered the
development of a portfolio of computational tools to aid rapid, effective and
balanced decision-making in Drug Discovery. Inpharmatica's in silico
ADME platform addresses a major bottleneck in drug discovery and enhances
productivity by providing a unique framework in which large collections of
molecules or chemistry ideas can be ranked and prioritised for progression
based upon their likelihood of success against Project-defined criteria.
This is the fourth ADME deal to be announced by Inpharmatica in the past six
months, providing further validation of the Company's expertise and
industry-leading technology in this important area in Drug Discovery.
Commenting on the announcement, Dr
Mike Tarbit, Senior VP of Pre-clinical R & D, at Inpharmatica, said:
"We are delighted with the
ongoing success of our ADME business and the calibre of partners we are
attracting. Inpharmatica is committed to developing and applying
advanced technologies that improve both the efficiency of the Drug Discovery
process and the quality of chemical leads and drug candidates produced.
This agreement clearly demonstrates recognition of Inpharmatica's approach and
we are delighted that GSK has chosen to use our ADME technologies and
expertise."
About Inpharmatica (www.inpharmatica.com)
Inpharmatica Ltd is a selective
drug discovery company that is applying its expertise in structural and
computational biology, and medicinal chemistry to the identification of
quality drug targets, chemical leads and drug candidates, thereby reducing
attrition in the drug discovery process. The Company's lead discovery program
is focused upon the development of 16 novel Nuclear Receptors
("NR's"), a family of proteins widely considered to be both
druggable and of high therapeutic interest. Drugs targeted against NR's
generate more than $10bn in sales annually. Inpharmatica's novel NR's
represent a more than a 30% increase on those identified in the public domain.
The Company's technology platform,
PharmaCarta [TM], is applied internally and available to collaborative
partners. It's a flexible and integrated chemogenomics suite that links
genomic and proteomic space with chemistry, and provides a unique approach to
hit identification, lead generation and drug optimisation for druggable
targets. This platform utilises the massive computing power of the Company's
2,500- processor compute farm, one of the largest in the world. Biopendium
[TM] and ADME services, both integral parts of PharmaCarta [TM] are also
available stand-alone. The Company has sales and collaboration partnerships
with leading biotech and pharma companies including Serono, Pfizer, Daiichi,
Riken, Galapagos, Aventis, UCB Pharma and Genentech.
Founded in 1998, Inpharmatica's
technology is based on research from Professor Janet Thornton's group at
University College London. The Company employs some 100 staff at its UK
locations London and on the Cambridge Science Park. To date the Company has
raised some £34.6m from leading venture capitalists including Unibio, 3i,
GIMV, Dresdner Kleinwort Capital, Advent Venture Partners, Abingworth Mgt,
Gilde Investment, Vertex Mgt and Genentech Inc.
For further information:
Andrew Lloyd
Andrew Lloyd & Associates
+44 1273 675100
Dr Malcolm Weir, Chief Executive Officer Inpharmatica Ltd +44 20 7074 4600
m.weir@inpharmatica.co.uk
Dr Vimal Mehta, Sr. VP Business Development Inpharmatica Ltd +1 203 453 6525
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