Heidelberg, Germany, November 29, 2007 /b3c newswire/ — Graffinity Pharmaceuticals GmbH announced today that it has entered into its second drug discovery collaboration with Pfizer, Inc. Through the collaboration, Graffinity will provide Pfizer with access to its proprietary, fragment-based screening technology for use in screening Pfizer drug targets. The agreement is Graffinity’s sixth discovery collaboration since it was established as an independent company in 2006.
Under the terms of the agreement, Graffinity will receive technology access fees and 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, remarked, ”We are pleased that Pfizer will be using our high-throughput approach to fragment screening. Our technology allows our partners to identify truly novel chemical entities against demanding drug targets. If desired, we even can give our customers reliable access to allosteric binders during our screens. The combination of these capabilities with a very deep and broad fragment library is what creates the value that our partners seek when working with us”.
Kristina Schmidt, CEO of Graffinity, stated, ”Graffinity was established almost two years ago as an independent company to commercialize its proprietary fragment-based discovery technology. To have entered into six collaborations in such a short period of time highlights the outstanding progress we have made, underscores the potential both of our technology and business model, and positions us as a leader in this growing area of drug discovery.”
About Graffinity Pharmaceuticals GmbH - www.graffinity.com
Heidelberg, Germany based Graffinity Pharmaceuticals is a leader in the field of small molecule fragment based drug discovery. The company pursues high-profile drug discovery collaborations with leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies worldwide. Graffinity employs a flexible business model which allows it to tailor programs to the specific needs of each partner and offers numerous benefits to its customers on a straightforward fee-for-service basis. Graffinity’s fragment screening platform combines chemical microarrays with a proprietary method for the standardized, label-free detection of compound-protein interactions via SPR imaging. The company’s rapid and scalable drug discovery technology explores a rich chemical universe to identify drug fragments which address challenging drug targets. With its 110,000-compound library that contains 23,000 true fragments, Graffinity possesses one of the most diverse fragment libraries. Graffinity has established collaborations with pharmaceutical and biotechnology partners including Amgen, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Genentech, Pfizer and Merck-Serono.
Graffinity’s unique fragment based discovery platform has been invented in 1998, and has been in routine industrial use since 2002 in screening more than 60 drug targets.
Graffinity Media Contact for Europe:
Dr. Kristina Schmidt
CEO
Graffinity Pharmaceuticals GmbH
Tel. +49 6221 6510-112
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Graffinity Media Contact for the Americas and Asia:
Mathias Woker
CBO
Graffinity Pharmaceuticals GmbH
Tel. +1 (401) 301-1086
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