Astex achieves drug discovery milestone with Boehringer Ingelheim
Cambridge, UK, February 14 2005.
Astex Technology, the fragment-based drug discovery and development company, today announced that it has successfully achieved the first milestone in its drug discovery collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The multi-target based collaboration announced in March 2004 is a three-year alliance for the discovery of novel drugs for various therapeutic indications where Astex is applying its proprietary fragment-based discovery approach, Pyramid™, to generate novel drug molecules that are active against disease targets selected by Boehringer Ingelheim. Boehringer Ingelheim will be responsible for all clinical development of drug compounds arising from the collaboration and has an option to obtain worldwide exclusive marketing rights for all identified compounds.
Under the terms of the multi-target collaboration, Boehringer Ingelheim made an upfront payment to Astex for access to its Pyramid™ technology, provides funding for the research programmes and milestone payments as candidate drug molecules move through preclinical and clinical development, plus royalties based on the sales of approved products.
Dr. Michael Pairet, Head of Research at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH & Co. KG, Germany said “Our ongoing drug discovery collaboration with Astex has complemented our in-house capabilities at Boehringer Ingelheim and is progressing very well. The achievement of this important milestone will have a significant impact on our drug discovery efforts and we very much look forward to continuing our work with Astex.”
“This milestone demonstrates Astex’s ability to deliver results in its drug discovery partnerships with leading pharmaceutical partners. We look forward to continuing to build on the success achieved in our important collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim,” commented Timothy Haines, Chief Executive of Astex.
About Astex
Astex is a biotechnology company producing novel small molecule therapeutics. Using its pioneering fragment-based drug discovery approach, Astex has rapidly established a broad pipeline of next generation, molecularly targeted oncology drugs, the first of which will enter clinical trials later this year.
Astex’s leading position in fragment-based drug discovery derives from its integrated discovery engine, Pyramid™. High-throughput X-ray crystallography is used to identify drug fragments bound to target proteins and to transform the fragments, using efficient medicinal chemistry, into potent, selective lead compounds. Pyramid™ has been successfully applied across a wide variety of therapeutic targets, including those regarded as ‘intractable’ by the pharmaceutical industry, resulting in lead compounds for the potential treatment of cancer, inflammation and Alzheimer’s disease.
Astex’s unprecedented productivity in lead discovery has been endorsed by drug discovery alliances with major pharmaceutical companies including AstraZeneca, Aventis, Boehringer Ingelheim, Fujisawa Pharmaceutical Company Ltd., Mitsubishi Pharma and Schering AG. Astex was established in 1999 and is well financed by leading, blue chip US and European investors (Abingworth, Advent International, Alta Partners, Apax, GIMV, HypoVereinsbank, Oxford Bioscience Partners, Schering AG and the University of Cambridge).
For further information on Astex please visit the Company’s website at www.astex-technology.com
About Boehringer Ingelheim
The Boehringer Ingelheim group is one of the world’s 20 leading pharmaceutical companies. Headquartered in Ingelheim, Germany, it operates globally with 152 affiliates in 45 countries and more than 34,000 employees. Since it was founded in 1885, the family-owned company has been committed to researching, developing, manufacturing and marketing novel products of high therapeutic value for human and veterinary medicine. In 2003, Boehringer Ingelheim posted net sales of 7.4 billion euro while spending more than one fifth of net sales in its largest business segment, Prescription Medicines, on research and development. For more information please visit www.boehringer-ingelheim.com