Emerald, FORMA sign strategic partnership for structure-based design of cancer drug candidates

Jun 28 2010

Emerald BioStructures, a leading provider of integrated structural biology services, and FORMA Therapeutics, a drug discovery company, today announced the signing of a strategic partnership for the structure-based design of cancer drug candidates for FORMA's pipeline. This multi-target, multi-year gene-to-structure research partnership will leverage Emerald's high-throughput X-ray crystallography expertise with FORMA's proprietary computational platform and Diversity Oriented Synthesis (DOS) chemistry capabilities, to elucidate important cancer targets and optimize the binding of FORMA'S drug candidates. Financial terms of the partnership are not disclosed, but the collaboration will provide funding for multiple full-time employees at Emerald BioStructures.

“Emerald has contributed to the structure-based design of multiple promising drug candidates for our customers, and we look forward to continuing to apply our leading-edge capabilities in collaborative gene-to-structure research in support of FORMA's drug discovery activities.”

"This unique collaboration highlights the breadth and depth of Emerald BioStructures' capabilities to fully integrate co-crystallization into the latest advances in drug discovery and highlights our interest in partnering with our customers," said Lance Stewart, Chief Executive Officer of Emerald BioStructures. "Emerald has contributed to the structure-based design of multiple promising drug candidates for our customers, and we look forward to continuing to apply our leading-edge capabilities in collaborative gene-to-structure research in support of FORMA's drug discovery activities."

Kenneth Bair, Ph.D., Senior Vice President and Head of Research and Development at FORMA, added, "FORMA views Emerald BioStructures as the best possible collaborator to unlock difficult but pivotal cancer targets. Emerald's world-class high-throughput target crystallization capabilities will drive rapid optimization of potential drugs for many targets in parallel, enhancing our chances of identifying exciting candidates for clinical trials."