As well as progressing its own drug discovery programmes, Beactica Therapeutics enters into partnerships selectively with other companies and world-leading drug discovery centres. The nature of the agreement provides an efficient and flexible way for the partnering organisation to leverage the power of Beactica Therapeutic's unique drug discovery platform to identify novel drug targets and strengthen the pipeline.
The collaboration with University of Dundee, a top-ranked university in the UK for biological sciences, was announced in January 2021. The aim of the partnership is to generate novel inhibitors and targeted degraders of WRN helicase, a protein with significant therapeutic potential for cancers with microsatellite instability.
The collaboration will leverage core capabilities of each partner and build on the work of Professor John Rouse, on the control of chromosome stability and DNA repair in cancer. Beactica will contribute key technical strengths in identifying and optimizing allosteric binders as well as evaluating ternary degradation complexes formed by PROTACs based on such binders. The collaboration will also benefit from top facilities and expertise available at Dundee, including the Drug Discovery Unit, headed by Prof. Paul Wyatt FRSE and the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit headed by Prof. Dario Alessi.
The collaboration with VIB and KU Leuven’s Centre for Drug Design and Discovery (CD3) was announced in March 2019. The aim of the partnership is to generate new leads against an innovative target for a range of inflammatory conditions.
The collaboration will leverage core capabilities of each partner and builds on the work of Prof. Dr Savvas Savvides (VIB-UGent), whose major research focus concerns macromolecular signalling complexes pivotal to inflammation. The alliance will use Beactica’s proprietary drug discovery platform that enables the identification of novel small molecule modulators against challenging target proteins. CD3’s drug discovery capabilities, including its medicinal chemistry resources and expertise, will be driving the optimisation of small molecule modulators towards new medicines. VIB Discovery Sciences will focus on the translational research needed to deliver validated candidates for small molecule therapeutics. The terms of the collaboration have not been disclosed.
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