Sapient Discovery, Helicon Therapeutics enter structural biology collaboration

Jun 16 2010

Sapient Discovery, LLC., a structure-guided drug discovery company, announced today that it has entered into a research collaboration agreement with the Helicon Therapeutics, Inc., a San Diego based pharmaceutical company. Under the terms of the agreement, Sapient Discovery will apply its proprietary structural biology platform and expertise to determine the three-dimensional structures for targets of interest to Helicon Therapeutics, Inc.

“Our crystallography services have solved novel and difficult structures for several of our customers and we are pleased to be able to extend our capabilities in this area to Helicon Therapeutics to aid them in their structure-guided drug discovery efforts”

In this collaboration, Sapient Discovery will provide Helicon Therapeutics with their complete array of X-ray crystallography and modeling services, including cloning, expression, protein purification, crystallization, co-crystal structure determination for targets selected by Helicon Therapeutics. Information obtained from X-ray crystallographic structures of the target will assist Helicon Therapeutics scientists in structure-based lead design and optimization, enhancing the company's ability to rapidly develop new drug candidates.

"Sapient Discovery has demonstrated that its proprietary crystallography technology accelerates drug discovery and we are excited about establishing this collaboration with Helicon Therapeutics to help advance their programs," stated Dr. Kal Ramnarayan, President and Chief Scientific Officer of Sapient Discovery. "Our crystallography services have solved novel and difficult structures for several of our customers and we are pleased to be able to extend our capabilities in this area to Helicon Therapeutics to aid them in their structure-guided drug discovery efforts," added Dr. Shankari Mylvaganam, Vice President of Research at Sapient Discovery.

"This agreement underlines the commitment of Helicon Therapeutics to advance our internal programs by accessing leading edge technologies for drug discovery. We believe these efforts will significantly accelerate our internal drug discovery and development projects," said Kenneth Johns, Jr. Esq, President and CEO of Helicon Therapeutics.