AstraZeneca, Swiss Pelago Biosciences Enter Strategic Collaboration
Swedish firm Pelago Bioscience, a Karolinska Institute spin-off, has now teamed up with drugmaker AstraZeneca to examine how drug candidates interact with protein targets.
In the last two years, the companies have collaborated on numerous Cellular Thermal Shift Assay (CETSA) projects and produced several publications.
CETSA, developed by Pelago Bioscience, allows researchers to directly detect when a compound binds to the drug target within cells and can exclusively identify compounds that directly bind to the human Androgen Receptor.
The new collaboration will allow for the further development of the CETSA method and expansion of its use within pre-clinical discovery at AstraZeneca, with a focus on its application in screening, safety assessment and translational sciences.
No financial details have been revealed.
“We are excited by this continued collaborative agreement with AstraZeneca. During the first two years, we developed a close working relationship and high degree of personal enthusiasm and commitment,” revealed Michael Dabrowski, CEO of Pelago Bioscience. “Both organisations have delivered valuable results that have enabled us to benchmark the applicability and value of CETSA data within pharmaceutical R&D. We believe that CETSA has the ability to transform the early research process and to cut drug discovery timelines significantly.”
“CETSA is an exciting technology that will allow us to examine the interaction between a drug candidate and its protein target within the cell,” added Steve Rees, vice president Discovery Biology at AstraZeneca. “We are pleased to be exploring the potential of this platform in an open collaboration with the scientists at Pelago.”
