EU-funded industry-academia drug discovery partnership targets kinases
Has received €1.1m in funding
Six organisations have joined forces to create the Translational Kinase Tumour Inhibitor Discovery Consortium (TAKTIC), funded with €1.1m by the EU 7th Framework Program ‘Research for the Benefit of SMEs’.
Targeting kinases has become an important therapeutic opportunity for treating cancer, diabetes, inflammatory diseases and more. TAKTIC brings together the proprietary technologies of three SMEs – SARomics Biostructures (Sweden), Prestwick Chemical (France) and ProQinase (Germany) – coupled with the University of Turin’s (Italy) expertise in medicinal chemistry, kinase biochemistry and biology and the high throughput platform for protein expression and crystallisation of the Israel Structural Proteomics Centre and the TechMedIll platform of the University of Strasbourg (France).
The merging of the capabilities of the six partners will ‘produce an efficient and versatile kinase drug discovery platform that will target some challenging and medically important kinases’, the consortium said.
‘We are excited to coordinate a frontline project of these dimensions, which brings together companies and academic researchers with impressive track records within their respective fields,’ said Professor Salam Al-Karadaghi, project coordinator and Director of Business Development at SARomics Biostructures.