SARomics Biostructures AB has entered into a collaborative distributorship agreement with Carna Biosciences, Inc. to provide its crystallography and protein structure determination services in Japan.

Under the terms of the agreement, Carna Biosciences will be the exclusive distributor for SARomics’ co-crystallography services on the Japanese market. The agreement also encompasses non-exclusive distribution in China, Korea, Canada and the state of California.

The crystallography services are used to increase the information content and to accelerate the development of pharmaceuticals. A co-crystal of a certain protein with the customer’s compound generated from their drug discovery research is analyzed by X-ray crystallography to determine the three-dimensional structure of the complex. This information reveals how the compound interacts with the protein and is used by pharmaceutical companies and other customers in the design of new and improved compounds.

“We feel privileged to start to work with SARomics having world class expertise and technology in the field of crystallography and protein structure determination. We hope our collaboration with SARomics will make our support for drug discovery of our clients much stronger and of higher quality than ever,” said Norio Aikawa, director of the board and head of sales and marketing, Drug Discovery Support Business at Carna Biosciences. “We have built a global reputation for our structure-based drug design skills and technology platform and we are currently supporting clients in Europe and USA to pursue their drug discovery objectives. We are honored that our work has been recognized by Carna Bioscience and that they wish to introduce our services in Japan and other territories,” said Dr. Björn Walse, founder and CEO at SARomics Biostructures.

The agreement is expected to have a modest influence on Carna’s business performance forecast of FY2016.