Cyclenium Pharma announces Drug Discovery Collaboration Agreement with Astellas Pharma
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Cyclenium Pharma Inc., an emerging pharmaceutical company specializing in the discovery and development of novel drug candidates based on proprietary macrocyclic chemistry, announced today the signing of a drug discovery collaboration agreement with Astellas Pharma Inc., one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical discovery and development companies. The collaboration, planned for an initial two year term, will exploit Cyclenium’s proprietary QUEST Library™ of next generation synthetic small-molecule macrocycles and associated optimization expertise to identify clinical candidates effective against multiple pharmacological targets selected by Astellas in their therapeutic focus areas.
While Cyclenium will be responsible for all medicinal chemistry efforts from hit validation to pre-clinical candidate selection, Astellas will utilize its internal resources for the characterization of biological and pharmacological properties of the new macrocyclic compounds as well as having responsibility for preclinical and clinical development of the resulting drug candidates. Cyclenium will receive an upfront payment and research funding from Astellas.
“We are very excited about entering this collaboration with Astellas, our first with a major pharmaceutical partner,” stated Helmut Thomas, Ph.D., President & Chief Executive Officer of Cyclenium. “We are confident that our CMRT™ Technology and proven success in the macrocycle area combined with the excellent research team at Astellas will provide new insight into the modulation of their difficult targets and enable the discovery of novel macrocyclic therapeutic agents.”
"We are very pleased to collaborate with Cyclenium," stated Toshihiro Watanabe, Ph.D., Vice President, Medicinal Chemistry Research Labs., at Astellas. "Cyclenium’s CMRT™ Technology on macrocycles offers a new approach towards our challenging pharmacological targets, and we hope that our collaboration will bring patients innovative and highly beneficial drugs."
Cyclenium has translated its over 15 years of pioneering experience, extensive knowledge base and unparalleled expertise in small molecule macrocyclic chemistry into its next generation CMRT (“smart”) drug discovery technology that addresses the shortcomings of earlier efforts in this increasingly important domain.
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