Collaborative Effort Seeks to Identify Pharma Target Modulators

Cyclenium Pharma announces a research collaboration with The Hospital for Sick Children to Identify novel macrocyclic modulators for pharmacological targets in multiple therapeutic areas.

Cyclenium Pharma Inc., an emerging pharmaceutical company specializing in the discovery and development of novel drug candidates based on proprietary macrocyclic chemistry and The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), one of the world’s premier biomedical research and treatment centers, have entered into a research agreement designed to discover novel modulators for multiple new and existing biological targets of pharmacological interest across a variety of disease areas, including cardiovascular, immunology and oncology.

This collaboration will provide SickKids researchers with immediate access to Cyclenium’s proprietary QUEST Library of next generation macrocyclic molecules and associated chemical hit and lead optimization capabilities. The initial objective of these exploratory efforts is to identify compounds capable of interacting with specific therapeutic targets being studied at SickKids, thereby providing tools to improve the understanding of their involvement in the pathophysiology of specific diseases, with the ultimate goal of discovering novel therapeutic or diagnostic agents.

“We are delighted that a distinguished institution like SickKids is interested in the power and capabilities of our small molecule macrocyclic technology to contribute to their cutting-edge research efforts,” stated Helmut Thomas, Ph.D., president, chief scientific officer and chief executive officer of Cyclenium. “The combination of their internationally renowned investigators and translational expertise with our CMRT Technology and past development success in the macrocycle space provides unique opportunities for the ground-breaking discovery and development of new therapies and diagnostics.”

The library will be made available to researchers through the SickKids Proteomics, Analytics, Robotics & Chemical Biology Center (SPARC BioCenter). The SPARC BioCenter is a high-throughput drug screening facility at SickKids. One of the first studies to be initiated involves targets implicated for the treatment of cancer and immune disorders.

For Cyclenium, this is the latest in an extensive series of international discovery collaborations established with prominent companies and research institutions to explore the exciting potential of its unique macrocycle chemistry technology, including Astellas Pharma, Haplogen GmbH, Fundación MEDINA, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), McGill University/Goodman Cancer Research Centre, Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer (IRIC)/Université de Montréal, and Southern Research Institute.

(Source: Business Wire)