Syngene partners Sapient Discovery to speed up compound synthesis

Syngene International, a subsidiary of Indian biotechnology group Biocon, is to partner Sapient Discovery, a US-based biotechnology company, to provide an integrated platform for structure-based drug discovery.

Syngene provides integrated chemistry, biology and biologics services to support development programmes of pharmaceutical and biotech companies worldwide.

With more than 14 years of experience as a contract manufacturer and research provider, Syngene has worked with companies of all sizes.

The company employs around 1,200 scientists in Bangalore and is equipped for early stage discovery and preclinical development, through clinical development (Phase I-III) to commercial manufacturing.

Sapient Discovery's Genes-to-Leads technology incorporates dynamically flexible 3-D structures of drug targets and anti-targets - proteins exhibiting structural similarity to the drug target - with laboratory screening methods, to generate target-selective initial drug leads in 60 days.

"Sapient Discovery's proprietary Genes-to-Leads, Fragments-to-Leads and X-ray crystallography technologies provide dramatic reductions in the time and costs associated with compound synthesis and screening and expand the horizons of chemical diversity potentially applicable to novel or even well studied drug targets," said Kal Ramnarayan, president and cso of Sapient Discovery.

Dr Goutam Das, coo of Syngene International, added: "The challenges posed by the rapidly growing number of new drug targets will be greatly benefited by the integration of supercomputer-based virtual screening and X-ray crystallography methods with laboratory screening technologies."