Anadys Pharmaceuticals Inc has entered into a drug discovery collaboration with Roche. The two companies began a partnership in August 2002 that utilized Anadys' drug discovery capabilities to advance lead compounds against a Roche oncology programme. This agreement was expanded in October 2003.

Under the new agreement, Anadys will engage its drug discovery capabilities, including medicinal chemistry, structure-based drug design, cheminformatics and biology to advance lead compounds against an additional undisclosed Roche programme. Financial terms of the collaboration were not disclosed, but include R&D funding, and potential milestone and royalty payments to Anadys, a release from Anadys informed.

"Since 2002, we have worked closely with Anadys," said Jonathan Knowles, Roche's president of Global Research. "We are very pleased by the progress we have made in this partnership and we are now expanding the relationship to include other therapeutic areas," he asserted.

"We welcome the opportunity to build on our relationship with Roche in a new therapeutic area while further validating our drug discovery capabilities," said Kleanthis G Xanthopoulos, Anadys' president and CEO. "With our expertise in medicinal chemistry and structure-based drug design, we continue to demonstrate our ability to rapidly move quality compounds from the discovery stage into preclinical development," he declared.

Anadys Pharmaceuticals Inc is a biopharmaceutical company committed to advancing patient care by discovering, developing and commercializing novel small molecule, anti-infective medicines for the treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV), hepatitis B virus (HBV) and bacterial infections. Anadys is advancing its anti-infective portfolio through the development of its two clinical programmes, the isatoribine family of compounds including the oral prodrug ANA975 for the treatment of HCV, and ANA380 for the treatment of HBV.