STOCKHOLM, Sweden, and SITTINGBOURNE, U.K., Sept. 12, 2002 (PRIMEZONE) -- Biovitrum, one of Europe's leading biotech companies, and BioFocus plc, the pioneering collaborative drug discovery company, today announced they have entered into a drug discovery collaboration focused on Gprotein coupled receptors (GPCRs), exploiting both novel technologies developed by BioFocus and Biovitrum's GPCR target expertise.
Under the agreement, BioFocus and Biovitrum will jointly identify novel drug molecules for a number of GPCRs. The financing structure of this collaboration has been defined to build equal long-term value for both companies.
GPCRs are a large and important class of targets, which are currently the basis of approximately 50 per cent of all marketed drugs. The function of a substantial number of these receptors is unknown, so the discovery of selective agonists and antagonists (molecules that activate or block receptors) is expected to help in unravelling their function using a socalled chemogenomics approach.
"By identifying receptor function and selective lead molecules in parallel, we believe that the time to develop novel drug candidates can be considerably shortened," commented Dr Terje Kalland, Chief Scientific Officer at Biovitrum, "This is a fantastic opportunity for Biovitrum to further strengthen its expertise in the GPCR field and capitalize on our GPCR gene sequence portfolio in a collaboration built on complementary strengths."
"This collaboration allows BioFocus to use our world-class expertise in medicinal chemistry, screening and drug-discovery to build value for the company," stated Dr. David Stone, Chief Executive at BioFocus, "We have developed a range of exciting novel technologies to speed the discovery of new drugs, especially for the GPCR area, and will be applying them actively in this collaboration."
About Biovitrum
Biovitrum is a biotech company active in the discovery and development of drugs to treat metabolic diseases, such as obesity and type 2 diabetes, and in the development of protein therapeutics, with metabolic diseases and oncology as targeted therapy areas. The company has a strong intellectual property and technology platform, with a number of compounds in clinical development.
Biovitrum, located in Stockholm and Uppsala, Sweden, is one of the largest biotech companies in Europe with about 530 employees, of which more than 420 work within R&D. Annual revenues, including royalties and contract service fees, finance the major part of the research budget of SEK 700 million per annum.
About BioFocus
BioFocus is a pioneering collaborative drug discovery company that applies its comprehensive range of medicinal chemistry expertise and biological screening capabilities to accelerate its partners' discovery programs. It is a growing and profitable company quoted on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange and has approximately 190 staff located at three U.K. science centers near Cambridge and Sittingbourne. BioFocus works with a wide range of global biopharmaceutical companies including Axxima, GlaxoSmithKline, Millennium, Daiichi, Pfizer, Roche and Teijin.
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