Astex achieves milestone payments in GSK collaboration
Milestone payments have reached £5.9m since 2009
Cambridge, UK-based biotech Astex Therapeutics has achieved multiple early milestones in its fragment-based drug discovery collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline, which began in November 2009. Total milestone payments received under the collaboration have now reached £5.9m.
Astex is merging with SuperGen, a US developer of cancer drugs, to form Astex Pharmaceuticals this year, and together the group has several partnership deals with large pharma companies, which it says are potentially worth up to £2bn in future milestone and royalty payments.
The GSK milestone payments relate to the application of Astex's Pyramid fragment-based screening technology to a number of molecular targets identified by the UK drugmaker.
Following the identification of validated fragment hits the joint project teams prioritise fragments to be taken into lead optimisation with the intention of selecting clinical development candidates for further development by GSK.
‘We are delighted to have achieved these initial milestones within 18 months of beginning our collaboration with GSK. This achievement is testament, not only to the power of Astex's technology to rapidly deliver novel chemical start points against challenging disease targets, but is also a reflection of how well the Astex-GSK joint project teams are working together in the collaboration,’ said Dr Harren Jhoti, chief executive of Astex Therapeutics.