Nuevolution in drug discovery alliance with Lexicon Pharmaceuticals

Copenhagen-based drug discovery company Nuevolution A/S has established a strategic alliance with Lexicon Pharmaceuticals aimed at the discovery of novel small molecule lead compounds for highly validated drug targets.

Under the terms of the alliance, Nuevolution's proprietary Chemetics drug discovery technology will be applied to identify novel small molecule lead compounds against a range of drug targets proposed by Lexicon, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of breakthrough treatments for human disease. Nuevolution will receive an upfront payment and will be eligible for milestone payments and royalties on compounds identified using its technology as candidate molecules progress through preclinical and clinical development and onto the market. At a future point in time, Nuevolution will have the option to expand its involvement in certain programs under a cost and profit sharing arrangement.

The collaboration will harness the power of Nuevolution's Chemetics platform technology, which enables both hit identification and hit-to-lead optimisation by exploration of ultra large chemistry space through the screening of multiple fragment-based small molecule libraries of more than 100 million compounds per library.

The validated targets have been identified through Lexicon's Genome5000TM program where the company explored the physiological and behavioral function for nearly 5,000 human genes by studying the corresponding mouse genes in knockout animals. This endeavor led to the identification of more than 100 highly validated drug targets that Lexicon is using to build a unique and growing clinical pipeline.

"Our proprietary Chemetics platform uses innovative DNA labeling to allow fragment-based drug screening at an unprecedented scale," said Alex Gouliaev, ceo of Nuevolution A/S. "We believe this generates high quality hits and leads far more rapidly and reliably than current ultra high throughput methods. Combining our platform with Lexicon's highly validated target portfolio represents an exceptional drug discovery opportunity and we very much look forward to bringing together Lexicon's expertise in biology and ours in chemistry, creating a synergistic biotech alliance."

"This important alliance is designed to accelerate Lexicon's ability to move from novel knockout validated targets to drug candidates as we continue to build our pipeline of innovative products," said Brian Zambrowicz, Ph.D., executive vice president and chief scientific officer of Lexicon.