Europe's largest biotechnology company, Serono has licensed Aureus Pharma's AurSCOPE GPCR knowledge database.

In this multi-year agreement, scientists at Serono Pharmaceutical Research Institute in Geneva will have access to both the AurSCOPE knowledge database and AurQUEST, a web application designed to query Aureus' knowledge bases. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

According to the company release, AurSCOPE GPCR is comprised highly detailed biological activity quantitative data from patents and journals from. G-Protein Coupled Receptors (GPCRs) are a major interest for the pharmaceutical industry as they are targets in a number of therapeutic areas including CNS, cardiovascular, metabolic disease, obesity, oncology and others.

"Aureus Pharma's knowledgebase on GPCR will provide Serono researcher's with high quality quantitative data which will complement our in-house experimental platform" Serono's Dr. Serge Halazy, Head of Research, Switzerland said adding, "We are very pleased to have Serono join our growing list of customers in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry" said Dr. Andre Michel, CEO of Aureus Pharma. "Having access to the high quality data in AurSCOPE GCPR will aid researchers in the discovery of new GPCR targeted drugs."