SGX Expands Relationship With Lilly
Thursday January 15, 8:31 am ET
SGX to Provide Lilly With Long-Term Access to SGX-CAT Synchrotron Facility At the Advanced Photon Source
SAN DIEGO, Jan. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Privately held SGX (Structural GenomiX, Inc.) today announced an expansion to its research collaboration and technology transfer agreement with Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY - News) to provide Lilly with long-term access to the SGX synchrotron beamline facility, SGX-CAT, to support Lilly's drug discovery programs. SGX-CAT is a state-of-the-art synchrotron facility enabling X-ray crystallography and protein structure determination built by SGX at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) located at the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, IL. Under the terms of the agreement, SGX will generate crystal structure data on Lilly drug targets and compounds thereby satisfying the long-term data collection needs of Lilly. Lilly will pay SGX upfront access fees and annual operating costs, and retains the option to further expand its access to SGX-CAT in the future for additional payments.
In April 2003, the companies formed a research and technology collaboration to aid Lilly's drug discovery programs by utilizing SGX's proprietary target to structure technologies. The expansion of the collaboration between the companies to include a strategic beamline access arrangement is a result of the significant progress SGX has made under the research and technology transfer collaboration. By expanding the collaboration, Lilly can now take advantage of SGX's facility with access to the most powerful X-ray source in the United States to further accelerate their drug discovery efforts.
"The skill and experience of SGX scientists and technicians, coupled with our unique beamline design and automation, make it possible for us to collect high-quality X-ray data rapidly and reliably at SGX-CAT," said Stephen K. Burley, M.D., D.Phil., F.R.S.C., chief scientific officer of SGX. "We are pleased to be able to provide Lilly with access to SGX-CAT where they can fully capitalize on the implementation of SGX's target to structure technologies. SGX is the only drug discovery company to have dedicated access to its own beamline at the APS third generation synchrotron."
About SGX
SGX is a structure guided drug discovery company accelerating the discovery of novel therapeutics to treat human diseases. SGX has developed FAST(TM), a proprietary technology for rapid identification of novel, potent and selective small molecule inhibitors of drug targets. FAST(TM) relies on libraries of synthetically enabled fragments developed by SGX, to ensure rapid hit-to-lead optimization and draws on SGX expertise in high-throughput co-crystallography, state of the art computational scoring and automated parallel synthesis. SGX technology drives the lead optimization process through iterative determination of co-crystal structures that reveal, in atomic detail, how small molecules interact with drug targets. The Company has established unparalleled capacity in this area by building SGX-CAT, a world-class facility for the collection of macromolecular X-ray diffraction data at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), located at the U.S. Department ofEnergy's Argonne National Laboratory. SGX utilizes FAST(TM) on programs focused in oncology as well as partnered programs in other disease areas. The Company is based in San Diego, California. For more information, please visit our website at www.stromix.com . |
