Scienza e Tecnologia
Curve Therapeutics Announces Collaboration with MSD for Next Generation Drug Discovery Platform
SOUTHAMPTON, England , Feb. 16, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Curve Therapeutics (Curve), a private biotechnology company pioneering a potentially game-changing, functional drug discovery platform, today announces a global research collaboration with MSD, the trade name of Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, NJ USA, to discover and validate modulators of up to five therapeutic targets using its Microcycle® technology, initially for oncology and neurology indications.
Under the terms of the agreement Curve will receive an upfront payment, and will be eligible to receive research, development and commercial milestones totalling up to US$ 1.7B should all five therapeutic programs succeed. Curve will also receive a royalty on net sales of any approved products resulting from the alliance.
Under the agreement, Curve will perform high throughput mammalian cell-based functional screening, hit characterisation, data-mining and analysis, and Microcycle® optimisation. MSD will be responsible for lead optimisation, clinical development, manufacturing and commercialisation of compounds identified through the collaboration.
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Curve's novel, proprietary platform enables the direct discovery of biologically active molecules against targets that have been difficult to address using conventional drug discovery methods. The platform allows rapid enrichment of highly diverse Microcycle® libraries in the cytoplasm of mammalian cells to identify library members that have a desired biological activity against a therapeutic target. Importantly, the compact size of Microcycles™ enables their transformation to non-peptidic small molecules for lead optimisation and development: an unparalleled advantage compared to other cyclic peptides.
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Curve originated from world-leading Microcycle® research conducted by Professor Tavassoli's group in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Southampton, UK. The company was established in 2019 by founding investor Advent Life Sciences and subsequently joined by co-lead Epidarex Capital.
Curve Therapeutics (Curve) is a private biotechnology company founded in 2019 and based in Southampton, UK . Curve is pioneering a game-changing, functional, drug discovery engine to generate higher quality hits and leads with the aim of discovering first-in-class therapeutics. Curve's platform enables the discovery of biologically active molecules against targets that have evaded conventional drug discovery techniques. Curve has developed an IP-protected, mammalian cell platform technology for functional screening and enrichment of diverse hexameric cyclic peptide (Microcycle®) libraries to identify those library members that have the desired biological activity against a therapeutic target. A key advantage of the technology is that both the library and the target are present in all of their native conformations within a cell. Uniquely, the compact size and rigid structure of Microcycles™ enables the design of small molecule hits and leads. The platform can be used for a wide range of therapeutically relevant targets, including protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions and has been used by Curve to develop a pipeline of cancer programmes against targets including a dual HIF-1/HIF-2 inhibitor. For more information visit: www.curvetx.com