CAMBRIDGE, U.K., Nov. 11, 2002 (PRIMEZONE) -- Astex Technology, the structure-based drug discovery company, today announced that it has joined the new Partnership for Structural Biology (PSB) established at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), Grenoble, France. PSB membership will provide Astex with guaranteed access to the new, state-of-the-art, X-ray beamline dedicated to macromolecular structural biology, facilitating continued application of Astex's high-throughput X-ray crystallography technology (HTXa) to drug discovery.
Dr. Harren Jhoti, Founder and CSO at Astex, said: "Access to the ESRF's world leading, third-generation synchrotron facility, has been key to a number of structural biology breakthroughs at Astex, such as elucidation of the first human cytochrome P450 structures. We are very pleased to be able to build on our current, successful relationship, and support the development of the new beamline."
About the PSB: The PSB has been set up by four major research institutes, the ESRF, the world's foremost synchrotron X-ray source, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL, Grenoble Outstation), the Institut LaueLangevin (ILL), a world centre for neutron scattering, and the Institut de Biologie Structurale (IBS) to pursue an integrated European Programme in Structural Biology and thus play a leading role in the various large-scale structural biology initiatives now underway in Europe. Selected groups, including established pharmaceutical enterprises and promising startup biotechnology companies, have been invited to back developments by becoming Associate Members. In addition to the new, dual-station X-ray beamline, new laboratory and office space will act as a focus for structural biology at the site.
About Astex: Astex Technology is a structure-based drug discovery company pioneering the use of high throughput X-ray crystallography for the rapid identification of novel drug candidates. The company's unique structural screening approach utilizes protein crystal structures to detect the binding of drug fragments, which are then optimized into potent lead compounds. Facilitating this approach is the company's integrated drug discovery platform of HTXa technologies, which covers all aspects of structure-based research, including protein production, crystallization, structure determination, bioinformatics and computational and medicinal chemistry. Astex is focusing its drug discovery approaches on proprietary and public domain protein targets from families and/or pathways. This includes validated kinases, phosphatases and proteases implicated in human disease. Astex recently announced a drug discovery collaboration with Mitsubishi Pharma, has further research agreements with another large pharmaceutical company, and has structural biology research agreements with AstraZeneca AB, Aventis Pharmaceuticals and Mitsubishi Pharma focused on solving novel cytochrome P450 crystal structures.