Internal Medicine

Analytical solutions provider Applied InSilico recently announced that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) signed a multi-year licensing agreement for the application of its Evolutionary Learning Environment (ELE). The deal is part of a larger GSK initiative to develop a new global decision support environment for drug discovery areas such as model building, library design and drug candidate selection. No financial details were disclosed.

Caprion Pharmaceuticals, a proteomics-based drug discovery company, in early November announced a collaboration agreement with AstraZeneca focused on the discovery of novel targets for prostate cancer. The intention of the collaboration is to push forward the development of innovative therapies, which in turn could bolster the development pipelines of both companies.

Day after day, alone with email The man with the foolish thoughts

Cardiome Pharma Corp. announced late last month that it completed its acquisition of Artesian Therapeutics Inc., a privately-held U.S. biopharmaceutical company, headquartered in Gaithersburg, Md. Artesian was founded in March of 2002 to discover and develop bi-functional small-molecule drugs for the treatment of cardiovascular disease. Artesian currently has two advanced small-molecule discovery programs in the area of congestive heart failure.

For some reason, every month, I can’t help but feel we are only scratching the surface of what is happening in the business of drug discovery. Of course, we have a different set of problems from other publications covering this industry. For them, a research breakthrough is a research breakthrough and if it hits any of the major diseases like cancer or CNS disorders, or is from an emerging field of discovery such as nanotechnology or microRNA,

COMPETITIVE PRESSURES and economic realities demand that pharmaceutical developers extract as much value as possible from drug discovery programs. Complicating this imperative are the seemingly endless paradigm shifts within discovery science. Although medicinal chemistry has always been part of the picture, over the last 20 years, the discovery model has evolved from pure med chem to incorporate varying components of computational chemistry, high-throughput methods and rational design. Today’s discovery programs are likely to employ all these methods.

Illumina announced recently that it has partnered with UK-based Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (WTSI) and Wellcome Trust Case-Control Consortium on an ambitious genomics and proteomics project. The goal: to enable Wellcome to better correlate genetic variation and gene function with particular disease states, thus enhancing drug discovery, allowing diseases to be detected earlier and permitting better choices of drugs for individual patients.

Ambion Inc., a provider of RNA analysis tools and reagents, recently announced it formalized a license and supply agreement with GE Healthcare whereby GE will manufacture for Ambion its mirVana line of microRNA (miRNA) microarrays using GE’s CodeLink bioarray technology. The mirVana miRNA bioarrays include a comprehensive panel of known human, mouse and rat miRNAs as well as Ambion’s proprietary, non-published microRNAs, Ambi-miRs.

Celliance Corp., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Serologicals Corp., recently acquired the ubiquitous chromatin opening element (UCOE) gene expression technology from Innovata, a United Kingdom-based product development company working on respiratory diseases and inhaled medications. The companies did not disclose the sum paid for the technology.

Strand Life Sciences, an in silico technologies company, has entered into a research collaboration with Elan Pharmaceuticals with the aim of supporting Elan’s drug discovery efforts. Elan Pharmaceuticals is a wholly owned subsidiary of Elan Corp., a Dublin, Ireland-based neuroscience-oriented biotechnology company that is focused on discovering, developing, manufacturing and marketing therapies in the areas of neurology, autoimmune diseases and severe pain.

Several years ago, I read a short joke that as much as anything was a commentary on the cycle of medicine development over the ages.