Astex grants Cytochrome P450 license to Pfizer
Cambridge, UK, 24th January 2006
Astex Therapeutics today announced that it has granted a non-exclusive, worldwide license to its Cytochrome P450 intellectual property to Pfizer Inc. Under the terms of the agreement, Pfizer will pay an up-front fee to Astex in return for a license under Astex’s portfolio of granted and pending Cytochrome P450 patents. The specific financial terms and other details of the license were not disclosed.
“This agreement is an example of Astex’s commitment to making its human Cytochrome P450 technology available to other companies who could benefit or are already benefiting from its application in the discovery and development of novel drugs with reduced metabolic liabilities. We expect that the application of Astex’s groundbreaking research, which was published in Nature and Science, will benefit many companies’ drug discovery and development programmes”, said Harren Jhoti, Chief Scientific Officer and Acting CEO.
Astex is continuing to strategically leverage its Cytochrome P450 intellectual property and further non-exclusive licenses to its human Cytochrome P450 technology are available.
Note to News Editors
Cytochromes P450 (CYP450) are the most significant group of drug-metabolising enzymes in humans. The action of these enzymes is the cause of adverse drug reactions to many marketed drugs and drug-combination therapies and many failures of novel drugs during their development have been attributed to their interactions with this class of enzymes. For example, drugs may be metabolized too rapidly by CYP450 before they have had time to be effective, or they may be broken down into smaller molecules which are toxic. Certain drugs may also inhibit the activity of a CYP450 enzyme which is involved in the metabolism of another drug that, given at the same time, can become elevated in the patient to levels which can cause side effects or become dangerous.
Astex was the first group in the world to successfully determine the 3-dimensional crystal structure of a human cytochrome P450 enzyme and was recently issued with patent GB2395718 covering the use of the crystal structure of human cytochrome P450 3A4. Astex scientists have now published on the crystal structures of human isoforms 2C9 and 3A4 in the world-leading scientific journals Nature and Science and two of Astex’s key scientists leading this work were recently nominated as finalists for the Industry Scientist of the Year Award at the prestigious IBC Fourth Annual Pharmaceutical Achievement Awards ceremony in Boston, MA.
The insight provided by knowledge of the crystal structures of cytochromes P450 and how drugs bind to these enzymes allows for the design of drug candidates with improved drug metabolism properties thereby reducing attrition rates in drug development and resulting in safer and more effective new medicines.
About Astex
Astex is a UK-based 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, AT7519, is currently in Phase I clinical trials in the US and in the UK. Astex has two further product candidates including AT9311, an oral cell cycle inhibitor, and AT9283, an aurora kinase inhibitor, both of which are in formal pre-clinical development with IND/CTAs planned for early to mid 2006. Astex’s leading position in fragment-based drug discovery derives from its integrated discovery engine, Pyramid™. High-throughput X-ray crystallography and other biophysical techniques are used to identify drug fragments bound to target proteins and to transform the fragments, using efficient medicinal chemistry, into potent, selective drug candidates. 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, Astellas Pharma, Boehringer Ingelheim, Mitsubishi Pharma, Novartis, sanofi-aventis 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-therapeutics.com
1. GB2395718. Astex Technology Limited. Inventors: Jhoti, H; Kirton, SB; Tickle, I; Vonrhein, C; Williams,PA. Crystal structure of cytochrome P450 3A4 and its use.
2. Williams et al (2004) 'Crystal structures of human cytochrome P450 3A4 bound to metyrapone and progesterone', Science Magazine, 2004 Jul 30:305 (5684): 683-686
Williams et al (2003) 'Crystal structure of human cytochrome P450 2C9 with bound warfarin', Nature, 2003 July 24;424 (6947): 464-8