Syrrx Announces Issuance of Patent and Appointment of Chief Scientific Officer
SAN DIEGO--(BW HealthWire)--Feb. 28, 2002--Syrrx, Inc., a high-throughput rational drug discovery company, announced the issuance of a patent (US Patent No. 6,296,673) containing claims directed towards the use of very small volumes of liquid to enable the formation of crystals. The recently issued patent (filed in collaboration with the University of California's Lawrence Berkeley National Lab) is exclusively licensed to Syrrx for commercial uses with third parties.
Use of technology covered by this patent has enabled Syrrx to build an automated platform capable of determining the structures of proteins and other molecules at a historically unprecedented rate. Since July of 2001, Syrrx has determined more than 80 structures of different unique proteins that represent attractive drug targets.
Inventors on this patent, including Syrrx co-founders, experimented with nanodrops (volumes of liquid as much as 100-times smaller than conventional volumes) in an effort to reduce the amount of a protein (or other molecule) required for the determination of its structure. Syrrx has since shown that X-ray crystallography of proteins using nanodrops generally requires less protein than conventional methods, and that these proteins crystallize much faster and yield crystals that are suited to automated handling and diffract X-rays to high resolution. The majority of crystals currently used at Syrrx for structure determination are produced using nanodrop technology.
``Nanovolume technology has the potential to fundamentally transform structural biology,'' said Duncan McRee, Ph.D., Director of Crystallography at Syrrx. ``Syrrx crystallographers have solved more structures in the past 5 months than they have in their entire careers. Nanodrops have directly contributed to this, and I believe this technology will significantly accelerate drug discovery.''
Syrrx Expands Management Team
Syrrx also announced that it has expanded its corporate management team with the appointment of Steve Kaldor, Ph.D., as Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Kaldor will manage the multi-disciplinary departments of research, technology, and drug discovery. Prior to joining Syrrx, Dr. Kaldor gained over 12 years of drug discovery and development experience at Eli Lilly and Company. He is the co-inventor of Viracept(TM), a marketed HIV protease inhibitor discovered using structure-based design techniques, and LY334370, a clinically efficacious anti-migraine agent identified with the aid of combinatorial chemistry methods. Dr. Kaldor received a Ph.D. (1989) in organic chemistry under the direction of Professor David A. Evans at Harvard University. He graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in chemistry from Columbia University in 1984.
``The appointment of Dr. Kaldor to the Syrrx management team extends the Company's experience and expertise in drug discovery as we move forward in our efforts to design and discover novel small molecule preclinical drug candidates,'' said Wendell Wierenga, Ph.D. Chief Executive Officer of Syrrx. ``The combined leadership on our management team of Dr. Kaldor, and Drs. David Webb and Keith Wilson, is exceptional for a company of our size.''
About Syrrx Protein Structures and Drug Discovery
The Syrrx ``gene to structure'' platform uses novel, proprietary tools that bypass historical bottlenecks in the classical protein structure determination process. Deployed in a streamlined, automated environment, the Syrrx platform enables the determination of protein structures more reliably and economically than previously possible. When Syrrx scientists crystallize a protein drug target, they can use the crystal to determine the protein's 3-dimensional 'shape.' Knowing the 'shape' of protein drug targets guides Syrrx scientists as they seek to discover drugs that address unmet medical needs.
About the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of California. Visit the Lab website at lbl.gov.
About Syrrx, Inc.
Syrrx, Inc. is a drug discovery company committed to redefining the way medicines are discovered. Based in San Diego, CA, the company is at the forefront of high-throughput rational drug discovery. Syrrx intends to leverage high-throughput structure determination, high-throughput screening, combinatorial and medicinal chemistry together with computational methods to discover novel small molecule preclinical drug candidates. This process enables a unique ``gene to drug'' platform based on the ability to perform high-throughput rational drug discovery. Syrrx has structural proteomic and drug discovery collaborations with industry leaders, including Pharmacia Corporation, Celera Genomics, and Cubist Pharmaceuticals. The company has also acquired small molecule assets from Onyx Pharmaceuticals for use in the internal discovery programs at Syrrx. For more information, please visit the Syrrx website at syrrx.com. |
