FREMONT, Calif., Feb. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- DiscoverX Corporation, the leading supplier of innovative cell-based assays and services for drug discovery and development, today announced its partnership with the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), a public-private organization established in 2003, to develop selective and potent chemical probes for the unexplored human kinome and to promote open sharing of these probes with the scientific community.
Even though more than 30 kinase inhibitors have been approved for the treatment of human disease since the turn of the century, 85% of human kinases are poorly studied and their role in human biology unknown. The SGC is committed to the design, synthesis and open sharing of kinase inhibitors for the understudied kinases.
Tim Willson Ph.D., chief scientist at the UNC site of the SGC commented: "We are excited to partner with DiscoverX and their KINOMEscan technology, which will define the selectivity profiles of the chemical probes we are developing in the SGC. The work performed by DiscoverX will enable the SGC to assemble and share with the scientific community an additional collection of 600 inhibitors together with their chemical structures and full kinase selectivity profiles (PKIS2)."
DiscoverX is the leading provider of KINOMEscan® kinase screening services and has successfully partnered with multiple organizations to bring kinase inhibitor programs into the clinic. Todd R. Nelson Ph.D., CEO of DiscoverX, stated: "With over 30 approved kinase inhibitor drugs on the market, kinases are a proven target class for drug discovery. Despite this success, only a small fraction of the kinases in the human genome have been explored primarily due to the limited availability of chemical probes. This is a fact we hope to change through our collaboration with the SGC."
With over 500 members, the kinase family of enzymes provides a tremendous opportunity for drug discovery. Development of chemical probes to interrogate this important family of proteins is a critical step to better understand the roles they play in human disease.
Justin Mika, General Manager of DiscoverX, stated: "Our partnership will allow the SGC to leverage the value of the DiscoverX KINOMEscan platform, in an open source manner, to generate important data on hundreds of kinases for the development of novel therapies."
About DiscoverX
DiscoverX Corporation, headquartered in Fremont, CA, USA, is a leader in the design, manufacture and sale of biochemical and cell-based assays for the drug discovery & life science markets. This industry-leading portfolio of products and services, under the KINOMEscan®, PathHunter® and BioMAP® brands, are used to aid life science research and enable rapid development of safe and effective biologic and small molecule drugs, by improving research productivity, effectiveness of screening, lead optimization & bioanalytical campaigns, as well as providing predictive tools that deliver physiologically relevant insights on drug molecules from early discovery through pre-clinical development. DiscoverX embodies a pioneering approach to creating life science tools that have been widely adopted across the globe in pharmaceutical, biotechnology and academic laboratories. Learn more at discoverx.com.
About the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC)
The SGC is a pre-competitive public-private partnership that accelerates research in human biology and drug discovery by making all of its research output freely available to the scientific community. To achieve its mission, the organization is building an open and collaborative network of scientists: the SGC has active research facilities at six leading academic institutions across the globe (Toronto-Canada, Oxford-UK, UNICAMP-Brazil, Karolinska-Sweden, UNC Chapel Hill-USA and Frankfurt-Germany), and SGC scientists collaborate with more than 300 researchers in academia and industry. The SGC is a registered charity (number 1097737) that receives funds from AbbVie, Bayer Pharma AG, Boehringer Ingelheim, Canada Foundation for Innovation, Eshelman Institute for Innovation, Genome Canada, Innovative Medicines Initiative (EU/EFPIA), Janssen, Merck & Co., Novartis Pharma AG, Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation, Pfizer, São Paulo Research Foundation-FAPESP, Takeda and Wellcome Trust. For more information, visit www.thesgc.org. PKIS, a collection of >300 fully annotated kinase inhibitors donated by GSK, is currently available from the SGC UNC by completing an on-line request.
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