Enamine Ltd, a leading provider of screening compounds, chemical building blocks and discovery services, has signed a collaboration agreement with the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC LMB), Cambridge, UK, and the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (IOCB), Prague, Czech Republic.

The new alliance is aimed at discovering novel rhomboid protease inhibitors as potential drugs to treat infectious, parasitic, oncological, immune and cardiovascular diseases.

Under the terms of the agreement, Enamine will provide the MRC LMB and IOCB with access to its integrated drug discovery capabilities, including Molecular Modeling, Compound Library, Screening Assays, Hit Finding and Characterization, Hit to Lead Chemistry and ADMET. The three parties will jointly own the Intellectual Property resulting from this programme and will seek to partner the small molecule inhibitors generated with pharmaceutical companies for onward clinical development. The collaboration agreement was negotiated by MRC Technology on behalf of MRC LMB.

Dr Sergey Zozulya, vice president, Biology at Enamine, said: "We are delighted to launch this collaboration with high calibre partners, demonstrating the interest of prominent academics in realising the translational potential of their scientific discoveries through an alliance with Enamine. This alliance reflects our strategy to apply our integrated discovery platform, cost effective solutions and state-of-the-art technologies to create valuable IP for our partners and clients. With our recently introduced High Throughput Screening and bioanalytical service components, we have added capability to boost productivity.”

Dr Matthew Freeman, Head of Cell Biology Division at MRC LMB, commented: “We anticipate a very successful relationship with Enamine. This project provides evidence of the ability of our respective research centres to recognize valuable drug discovery models.”

Dr Kvido Strisovsky, Group Leader at IOCB, said: “We are delighted to be part of this collaboration and we hope that the project will realise its full potential for the benefit of patients.”

Enamine is a medicinal chemistry driven company, provider of innovative screening libraries, comprehensive chemistry support in hit development, and integrated drug discovery services.

MRC LMB is one of the world’s leading research organisations. Its primary goal is to advance understanding of biological processes at the molecular level – providing the knowledge needed to solve key problems in human health.

The IOCB is a prominent national academic institute that carries out fundamental research in organic and medicinal chemistry, biochemistry and related disciplines.