Syngene Partners with Sapient Discovery to Expand Integrated Drug Discovery Offerings

Syngene International, a subsidiary of BIOCON Group, Indian biotechnology major, announces that it will offer fully integrated drug discovery services by partnering with Sapient Discovery, a US based Biotechnology Company. Syngene provides integrated Chemistry, Biology & Biologics services to support development programs of pharmaceutical & biotech companies worldwide on a platform of confidentiality and intellectual property protection. “Sapient Discovery’s proprietary Genes-to-Leads®, Fragments-to-Leads® and X-ray crystallography technologies provide dramatic reductions in the time and costs associated with compound synthesis and screening and expands the horizons of chemical diversity potentially applicable to novel or even well studied drug targets”, according to Kal Ramnarayan, Ph.D., President and CSO of Sapient Discovery. He also added that Sapient Discovery’s Fragments-to-Leads® assures the novelty of identified lead molecules for protein targets, since the 10,000 plus fragment collection at Sapient Discovery can aid in the ultimate synthesis of novel, patentable lead molecules in a short time span. “The challenges posed by the rapidly growing number of new drug targets will be greatly benefited by the integration of supercomputer-based virtual screening and X-ray crystallography methods with laboratory screening technologies. These techniques are likely to play an increasingly important role in drug discovery and optimization in the future”, said Dr. Goutam Das, COO of Syngene International. The companies intend to provide a highly integrated platform for structure-based drug discovery with one stop shop for structure-guided discovery, chemistry, biology and structural biology capabilities.