Polyphor Ltd,a privately-held, Swiss, research-driven pharmaceutical company, has signed the research collaboration and license agreement with Boehringer Ingelheim, under which Polyphor will apply its proprietary MacroFinder drug discovery technology to identify and optimize novel macrocyclic drug candidates addressing therapeutic targets selected by Boehringer Ingelheim.

In return, Polyphor will receive from Boehringer Ingelheim an up-front payment, research funding and milestone payments as candidate molecules progress through the drug discovery process, preclinical and clinical development and onto the market. In addition, Polyphor is eligible for undisclosed royalties on the commercial sales of any approved products.

In the collaboration, Polyphor will apply the MacroFinder Technology to challenging therapeutic targets that would otherwise be difficult to address with classical small molecule drug discovery approaches. These difficult targets will include, among others, protein-protein interactions. The objective of the collaboration is to identify novel MacroFinder drug candidates and to optimize their efficacy in vivo. Boehringer Ingelheim will then be solely responsible for subsequent development and commercialization of the identified drug candidates.

Jean-Pierre Obrecht, CEO of Polyphor, commented: “I take pride in this agreement, which is testament to a trustful business relationship of more than 10 years. Boehringer Ingelheim has an excellent reputation in the industry and the conclusion of this agreement therefore constitutes both a scientific and commercial validation of the MacroFinder platform. This first MacroFinder collaboration complements the PEMfinder collaboration established with Novartis two years ago and underscores Polyphor’s role as an innovator in drug discovery.”

Daniel Obrecht, CSO of Polyphor, commented: “I very much look forward to this collaboration and I am confident that combining Boehringer Ingelheim’s excellent R&D capabilities with Polyphor’s MacroFinder drug discovery platform will allow the two parties to develop potent and selective MacroFinder compounds able to effectively modulate challenging therapeutic targets and hopefully provide innovative treatments with significant therapeutic benefit to the patients.”

Polyphor’s MacroFinder drug discovery platform provides synthetic, macrocyclic molecules able to effectively modulate complex biological targets, including intra- and extracellular protein-protein interactions.

MacroFinder compounds consist of several subunits, which can be efficiently assembled in a modular fashion by high yielding organic chemistry transformations. The variation of these subunits can be used to subtly modulate activity, selectivity and ADMET properties such as cell permeability and oral bioavailability. MacroFinder therefore closes an important gap in the molecular diversity space of drug discovery.

Polyphor Ltd is a privately-held, research-driven pharmaceutical company to develop innovative products with high therapeutic benefit to the patient and providing high quality drug discovery support to its pharmaceutical industry partners.