Crystallography announcement du jour -
SAN DIEGO, June 6 /PRNewswire/ -- Novasite Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Novasite), a subsidiary of Applied Molecular Evolution, (Nasdaq: AMEV - news), announced the growth of its Expanded Target Drug Discovery(TM) (ETDD) technology program for G protein coupled receptors (GPCR) with the addition of a crystallography group led by Krzysztof Palczewski, Ph.D., Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Ophthalmology, and Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Washington in Seattle.
``The combination of crystallography and Novasite's technology creates a platform for significant new advances,'' commented Dr. Palczewski. ``The ETDD technology, based on variant receptor constructs, enables High Throughput Structure-Function applications which have utility in identifying drug- receptor interactions. Crystallizing subsets of these ligand-variant receptor complexes will substantially enhance Novasite's approach to drug discovery.'' He further added, ``I am looking forward to leading Novasite's GPCR crystallization efforts while maintaining my academic work.'' Recently, Dr. Palczewski and his colleagues elucidated the first GPCR structure (Science, 2000. 289: 739-45).
``Our objective is to strengthen our core capabilities with the best science available, and Dr. Palczewski's group solved the most difficult problem for GPCR crystallography by generating crystals of a GPCR amenable to structural elucidation,'' remarked Juan Ballesteros, Ph.D., Vice President of Research at Novasite. ``The combination of our ETDD drug discovery technology, which biochemically identifies the key drug-receptor interactions, and the structure elucidation provided by crystallography, will position us to deliver a structure-based discovery platform that has the potential to significantly shorten pre-clinical drug development by quickly translating structural information into novel drugs.''
Novasite Pharmaceuticals
Novasite Pharmaceuticals uses directed evolution technology to enhance small molecule drug discovery and optimization. Novasite's proprietary Expanded Target Drug Discovery(TM) technology enhances high throughput screening (HTS) by screening chemical libraries against thousands of variants of the target's binding site. The expanded recognition properties of the variant target library enable the identification of novel and high potency leads. Bioinformatic analysis of the large amount of data regarding specific ligand-receptor interactions obtained by the Expanded Target Drug Discovery(TM) approach serves to guide the lead optimization process. Novasite is a subsidiary of Applied Molecular Evolution, Inc... |
