SAN DIEGO--(BW HealthWire)--Jan. 24, 2002--Syrrx, Inc., a rational drug discovery company with an automated structural proteomics technology platform, today announced the formation of a multi-year research collaboration with Pharmacia Corporation (NYSE: PHA - news) for the determination of the 3-dimensional structures of proteins. The effort will leverage the Syrrx high-throughput structural proteomics technology platform to determine the 3-dimensional ``shapes'' of proteins, many of which will become the targets of future Pharmacia drugs. As a result of the collaboration, the companies expect to accelerate the discovery of novel drugs to treat human diseases including cancer, inflammation and infectious diseases. Financial terms of the agreement include a technology access fee, a potential equity investment in Syrrx, R&D funding, and success payments by Pharmacia.
``The Syrrx collaboration with Pharmacia represents the first large-scale, multi-family structural proteomics effort to date by a pharmaceutical company to advance structure-based drug design,'' said Wendell Wierenga, Ph.D., CEO of Syrrx. ``Pharmacia has shown its continued leadership and commitment to rational drug discovery as a means to make medical breakthroughs.''
``We view Syrrx as the technology leader in this field,'' said Douglas Morton, Ph.D., Vice President of Technology Acquisitions and Operations at Pharmacia.
Under the terms of the Pharmacia-Syrrx collaborative agreement, the companies also anticipate the deployment of the Syrrx ``gene to structure'' technology platform internally at Pharmacia. The Syrrx technology platform uses novel, proprietary tools to bypass historical bottlenecks in the classical protein structure determination process. Deployed in a streamlined, factory-like environment, the Syrrx technology platform enables the determination of protein structures more reliably and economically than previously thought possible.
Syrrx, Inc. is a science and technology-driven company committed to redefining the way medicine is discovered. Syrrx has a five-year technology development alliance with the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation, a structural proteomics collaboration with Celera, a three-year antibiotic discovery alliance with Cubist Pharmaceuticals, and has recently acquired certain small molecule assets from Onyx Pharmaceuticals for the development of medicines to fight cancer and inflammation. Based in San Diego, the company is the technology leader in the field of structural proteomics, the process of generating protein structures from genetic information. Syrrx leverages high-throughput structure determination with computational methods to discover new drugs. This process enables a unique ``gene to drug'' platform based on the ability to perform high-throughput rational drug discovery... |
