Entomed and Naeja sign screening agreement

French company ENTOMED, of Strasbourg, has entered into a screening agreement with NAEJA Pharmaceutical, of Edmonton in Canada.

The deal aims to bring new lead compounds into both partners' product pipelines in two therapeutic areas: infectious diseases and cancer. The companies will share the intellectual property arising from any discoveries made, and both will have an option to progress the development of compounds with interesting biological activity in their respective fields of interest.

According to the agreement, NAEJA will have access to the Entomotheque library of insect derived molecules and analogues developed by ENTOMED for the screening of β-lactamases inhibitors. β-lactamases are enzymes responsible for bacterial resistance to common antibiotics such as penicillins and cephalosporins. ENTOMED will be able to investigate NAEJA's proprietary compounds library for anti-proliferative activities.

'This collaboration with NAEJA is important for ENTOMED in two ways: it will allow us to capture more value in the anti-microbial area from our Entomotheque, while at the same time giving us access to further new leads to feed our own anti-cancer drug discovery programme,' said Dr Jean Comba lbert, ceo of ENTOMED. 'Given the attractive "win-win" structure of this deal, we expect to sign a number of similar deals in the near future targeted at other important therapeutic areas.'