RICHMOND, Calif., July 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Sangamo BioSciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: SGMO - news) today announced an agreement with Pharmacia Corporation (NYSE: PHA - news) to develop novel cell lines for small molecule screening. Under the terms of the agreement, Sangamo scientists will engineer a cell line to overproduce a specific protein of therapeutic importance. The engineered cell line will then be transferred to Pharmacia for use in their drug discovery screening program. The agreement includes an upfront payment, research funding, product development milestones, and royalties on product sales. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
``This agreement demonstrates the potential of our zinc finger DNA-binding protein transcription factor (ZFP TF) technology to be integrated into multiple aspects of the drug discovery process,'' said Edward Lanphier, Sangamo's president and chief executive officer. ``We have signed over 20 agreements with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to assist their scientists in determining gene function and validating gene targets. This is our second small molecule screening collaboration, which has the advantage of allowing scientists to overexpress a particular protein without using its cloned DNA.''
In most organisms, including humans, regulation of gene expression is controlled by transcription factors. A transcription factor regulates gene expression by recognizing and binding to a specific DNA sequence associated with a particular gene and causing that gene to be activated or repressed. Sangamo's ZFP TFs are engineered transcription factors designed to help researchers understand the role of individual genes in various diseases.
Small molecule screening is a methodology used by the pharmaceutical industry to examine chemical compounds quickly and efficiently in order to identify viable drug candidates. In this application, a cell line will be engineered using a specific ZFP TF to overproduce a protein that has been implicated in a specific disease. By employing a customized cell line that induces the gene of interest to overexpress the protein target, pharmaceutical researchers should be able to more quickly assess and quantify the impact of various chemical compounds on that target... |
