Graffinity Enters into Drug Discovery Collaboration with Shionogi

Graffinity Pharmaceuticals GmbH, a member of the NovAliX group of companies, have announced that it has entered into a research collaboration with Osaka, Japan based Shionogi & Co, Ltd Under the terms of the agreement, Graffinity will receive technology access fees and payments for follow-up chemistry for the generation of various, novel small molecule hits against a key drug target. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Mathias Woker, Chief Business Officer of Graffinity, remarked:, ”We are pleased that Shionogi has chosen to collaborate with us to apply our fragment based screening platform to one of Shionogi’s high priority discovery programs. This marks our first collaboration with a leading Japanese pharmaceutical company. Our proprietary assay/label-free SPR primary screen of 24,000 fragments and 87,000 leadlike molecules is often crucial in addressing drug targets that are difficult to screen with other technologies.”