Galapagos and Cellzome in Kinase Drug Discovery Collaboration

Galapagos NV and Cellzome Inc. have announced that they are collaborating in kinase drug discovery. 

Under the terms of the agreement, Galapagos' service division BioFocus DPI gives Cellzome access to its SoftFocus^® kinase libraries and provides biological screening and chemistry expertise to find inhibitors of Cellzome's kinase targets. 

In this service contract, BioFocus DPI receives an upfront payment for the library access as well as research fees. 
 
Kinases are an important class of drug targets often pursued by the pharmaceutical industry because of the vital role they play in regulating cancer and inflammatory diseases. 

Cellzome has developed a proprietary proteomics technology, Kinobeads, which allows the screening of kinases directly in extracts from cells or tissues. 

In this collaboration, the companies use Cellzome's Kinobeads technology to screen the BioFocus DPI libraries for the identification of potent inhibitors against key inflammatory kinases in their physiological context.
 
"We chose to work with BioFocus DPI because of the high quality of their SoftFocus kinase libraries and their specific expertise in screening," said Tim Edwards, CEO at Cellzome. 

"This allowed us to transfer our Kinobeads assay rapidly, and begin to identify small molecule inhibitors of particular kinase targets."

"The collaboration with BioFocus DPI is progressing well; it is an ideal addition to our own in-house drug discovery capabilities."
 
"We are pleased that Cellzome has selected BioFocus DPI as a collaborator for its kinase research program," said Onno van de Stolpe, CEO of Galapagos.

"Hits generated from the SoftFocus libraries have produced novel leads for our partners, resulting in faster-than-industry-average progression through the drug discovery process."

"We believe this collaboration will contribute significantly to Cellzome's discovery of specific kinase inhibitors of high pharmaceutical value."