Inpharmatica Ltd has signed a discovery collaboration agreement with Procter and Gamble Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (P&GP), a subsidiary of The Procter and Gamble Company.

Under the terms of the agreement, P&GP will fund a research program at Inpharmatica and pay additional license fees to use discoveries arising from the collaboration. Inpharmatica's flagship discovery platform, PharmaCarta, will play a key role in the collaboration.

The collaboration goal will be to develop robust computational structure models and identify chemotypes for families of human G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs), the protein targets which have proven most useful in the development of new drugs. Inpharmatica will apply proprietary elements of PharmaCarta, its unique drug discovery platform. Specifically, the Chematica component will provide three dimensional homology modelling, drug binding site identification and mapping techniques and proprietary databases such as StARLITe will identify corresponding tractable chemical hits and GPCR family chemotypes.

Inpharmatica has successfully applied its PharmaCarta technology platform in collaboration with a number of pharmaceutical and biotech companies. It also forms the basis for Inpharmatica's own highly successful in-house discovery program. PharmaCarta has been applied for generating pre-clinical leads in nuclear receptors, Inpharmatica's lead program, and for other on-going research programs.

Commenting on the announcement, Dr Malcolm Weir, CEO at Inpharmatica said: "Through this collaboration, P&GP will gain access to our extensive suite of world class drug discovery tools and to our considerable expertise in molecular modelling and cheminformatics. As a result, Inpharmatica will further build its skills and knowledge in the area of GPCRs, substantially increasing opportunities for internal discovery and revenue generation. We look forward to a mutually beneficial and productive relationship with P&GP."