Graffinity Pharmaceuticals GmbH has entered into a drug discovery research collaboration with Genentech, Inc, a wholly-owned member of the Roche Group. With this collaboration Genentech will gain access to Graffinity's proprietary, fragment-based drug discovery technology.

Under the terms of the agreement, Graffinity will receive technology access fees and optional payments for follow-up chemistry for the generation of novel, small molecule hits against a number of drug targets. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

Mathias Woker, chief business officer of Graffinity, stated, "We are very pleased that Genentech has decided to partner with us in fragment-based drug discovery. This marks our second collaboration with Genentech, and we think that this new agreement demonstrates how attractive Graffinity's very large fragment library and rapid surface plasmon resonance (SPR) screening technology are."

Kristina Schmidt, CEO of Graffinity, remarked, "Our label-free, biophysics-based screening technology has shown to be an important element for companies which choose to work with us. With the help of this technology we enable partners, such as Genentech, to explore drug targets that would remain white spaces on the map of drug discovery, if researchers were limited to other conventional high-throughput screening techniques."

Heidelberg, Germany based Graffinity Pharmaceuticals is a leader in the field of small molecule fragment based drug discovery.