Ukraine-based Enamine and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) agreed to a collaboration through which Enamine will provide library synthesis, medicinal chemistry, and biological services for EMBL’s small-molecule cancer drug discovery programs. Enamine will establish a team of full-time equivalent medicinal chemists to work on the project, which is focused on the development of cancer therapeutics with novel mechanisms of action, the organizations state.
EMBL has an existing relationship with Enamine. “We have been working with Enamine for several years, primarily to enhance the chemical space of our internal screening library,” explained Joe Lewis, Ph.D., head of Chemical Biology Core Facility at EMBL. “We realized quickly that their 2 million plus compound collection provides quality compounds allowing an increase in the chemical diversity of our screening deck.”
David Will, Ph.D., head of Medicinal Chemistry at EMBL, added, “This collaboration with Enamine will be pivotal for the success of our project for identifying targets from phenotypic screens and synthesizing and triaging new patentable preclinical compounds. Their agility and flexibility with access to the world’s largest collection of building blocks in stock at Enamine and integration of chemistry with a comprehensive biology service portfolio perfectly fit our goal of nominating a preclinical development candidate by 2018.”
Based in Kiev, contract research organization (CRO) Enamine offers screening libraries, building blocks, fragments, and comprehensive chemistry support for hit discovery and drug discovery, including organic synthesis, medicinal chemistry, biological screening, ADME-PK testing, and integrated discovery collaboration. The firm says its collections include over 2.2 million screening compounds and a 180,000-building block library, which it claims is increasing by another 2000 new building blocks every month.
In January, Enamine expanded its multiyear drug discovery services collaboration with Actelion Pharmaceuticals, through which Enamine is providing library synthesis and medicinal chemistry services. In the latter quarter of 2016, Enamine extended a collaboration with Danish firm Pcovery, which is focused on the discovery of drugs for treating invasive fungal infections, and separately inked a compound library synthesis partnership with small-molecule design specialist FCH Group.
Earlier this month, EMBL announced an agreement with the Spanish government to establish a new EMBL facility at the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park, dedicated to tissue biology and diseases modeling.
