Corporate Partnerships
Astex's unprecedented productivity in fragment-based drug discovery has been endorsed by corporate partnership with many of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies:
Astex and GlaxoSmithKline have entered into a new collaboration agreement to discover, develop and commercialise novel compounds directed against multiple therapeutic targets of interest to GSK. Under the new collaboration Astex will apply its world-leading fragment chemistry platform, Pyramid™, to multiple targets identified by GSK, with the objective of identifying and developing new candidate drugs. The targets have been selected from multiple therapeutic areas within GSK. See press release.
Astex and Janssen Pharmaceutica NV (a Johnson and Johnson company) have entered into a research alliance focused on the research, development and commercialisation of novel drugs for the treatment of cancer. The agreement grants Janssen Pharmaceutica a worldwide exclusive license to compounds arising from Astex’s novel FGFR inhibitor programme, and the parties also established a new drug discovery alliance focused on the identification of novel inhibitors against a further two cancer drug targets. See press release.
Astex and Novartis have a strategic licensing and drug discovery alliance focussed on the research, development and commercialisation of novel cell cycle control drugs for the treatment of cancer and other human diseases. See press release.
Astex has completed the research phase of a collaboration and license agreement with AstraZeneca relating to the discovery of novel drugs against Protein Kinase B. Further activities continue at AstraZeneca under this agreement with the selection of a clinical candidate by AstraZeneca announced in January 2010. See press release. The compound AT13148 was derived from this programme and is also in preclinical development. Astex retains all commercial rights in this compound. See press release.
Astex and AstraZeneca also have an agreement relating to the discovery of novel drugs against a key protein target, beta-secretase implicated in the onset of Alzheimer's disease. Astex has completed the research component of the collaboration but will continue to benefit from milestone payments and royalties which are contingent on the continuing development and eventual sales of an approved product arising from the collaboration. See press release.
Since the company’s formation in 1999, Astex has successfully completed drug discovery and research collaborations with Boehringer Ingelheim, Janssen Research Foundation (a division of Janssen Pharmaceutica, a Johnson & Johnson company), Mitsubishi Pharma Corporation and Bayer Schering. See press release.
In addition Astex has successfully completed work under a series of structural biology research agreements with AstraZeneca, Astellas Pharma, Mitsubishi Pharma Corporation and sanofi-aventis. This work was focused on solving novel cytochrome P450 crystal structures. These structures are being used to optimise the partner’s compounds and so improve the success rate of drug development. See press release.