Discovery Partners International Announces Major Chemistry Collaboration With Merck
SAN DIEGO, Oct. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Discovery Partners International, Inc. (Nasdaq: DPII - news) announced today that it has entered a multi-year agreement with Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE: MRK - news) to design, develop and produce libraries of novel drug-like high purity chemical compounds for Merck. Specific financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Under the terms of the agreement, Discovery Partners will collaborate with Merck to develop custom compound libraries. Discovery Partners will then manufacture and purify the compounds to extremely high purity standards using Discovery Partners' proprietary high-speed purification technology.
``Merck is a premier pharmaceutical research organization renowned for innovations in drug development,'' said Riccardo Pigliucci, Chairman and CEO of Discovery Partners, ``and we look forward to working closely with Merck. Our goal is to accelerate Merck's research and development.''
``Discovery Partners has invested significant resources in new purification technologies and infrastructure and this collaboration again validates our business strategy and leadership in this field,'' added Pigliucci. ``Our proprietary high-throughput purification approach has re-defined the quality standards for compound libraries.''
Discovery Partners' products and services are designed to improve productivity in drug research and development processes. The company has a large and growing chemistry optimization group for generating custom compounds and medicinal chemistry support for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology community. Providing large numbers of purified compounds can reduce the time and resources required in the hit confirmation phase of high throughput screening of potential drug molecules.
The Accelerated Retention Window (ARW) process, Discovery Partners' proprietary technology for rapid high throughput purification, industrializes medicinal chemistry. Rapid and efficient design, synthesis, characterization and purification of drug-like molecules to accelerate drug discovery and lead optimization is the focus of medicinal chemistry. The ARW process facilitates the purification of hundreds to thousands of compounds per day. The process generates compounds of extremely high purity -- comparable to standard synthesis and purification methods of individual compounds at a medicinal chemist's bench.
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