Echelon and Comgenex form international drug discovery alliance

ComGenex, of Budapest in Hungary, and US company Echelon Research, of Salt Lake City, have formed a discovery alliance aimed at areas such as cancer, heart and inflammatory diseases. In the collaboration, ComGenex will provide its drug discovery chemistry capabilities including high throughput synthesis, analysis, ADME/Tox predictions, chemoinformatics and chemogenomics technologies. Echelon will use proprietary high-throughput screening assays to identify lead compounds that inhibit lipid kinase and phosphatase enzyme targets.

Dr Laszlo Urge, ceo of ComGenex, said: 'This discovery alliance is part of our long term strategy to apply our drug discovery expertise to move downstream and to create an IP portfolio for potential products. We think that there is a strong synergy between Echelon's world leading biology and our chemistry expertise.' ComGenex is presently the largest independent discovery chemistry supplier in Europe, and a leader in discovery-related ADME and stability services.

Echelon was established in 1997 to supply synthetic phosphoinositide and isoprenoid signalling molecules for r&d. It has developed rapid, fluorescence-based assays for interconversions of these lipids, as well as activity assays for proteins that bind and process lipids. Echelon's novel assays have potential for identifying enzyme inhibitors and signaling antagonists to create new pharmaceuticals that act on targets in lipid cell signalling.