Galapagos, Cellzome to collaborate on kinase drug discovery

By E. Janene Geiss

Philadelphia, July 19 - Galapagos NV and Cellzome Inc. have announced that they are collaborating in kinase drug discovery.

Under the agreement, Galapagos' service division BioFocus DPI will give Cellzome access to its SoftFocus kinase libraries and provide biological screening and chemistry expertise to find inhibitors of Cellzome's kinase targets, according to a company news release.

In this service contract, BioFocus will receive an upfront payment for the library access as well as research fees, officials said.

Kinases are an important class of drug targets often pursued by the pharmaceutical industry because of the vital role they play in regulating cancer and inflammatory diseases.

Cellzome said it has developed a proprietary proteomics technology, Kinobeads, which allows the screening of kinases directly in extracts from cells or tissues.

In this collaboration, the companies will use Cellzome's Kinobeads technology to screen the BioFocus DPI libraries for the identification of potent inhibitors against key inflammatory kinases in their physiological context.

Cellzome is a Heidelburg, Germany, privately owned drug discovery company.

Galapagos is a Mechelen, Belgium, genomics-based drug discovery company.

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