Successful collaboration with Kyowa Hakko Kogyo in search of novel drugs based on new compound libraries

16-Jul-2004

Potsdam. AnalytiCon Discovery GmbH (AnalytiCon), a worldwide specialist in the search of novel active molecules from natural products reported a first success in identifying biologically active semi-synthetic substances for novel medicaments in collaboration with Kyowa Hakko Kogyo Co., Ltd.(KHK), the Japanese pharmaceutical and biochemicals corporation.

KHK has developed a new microbial technology to produce cis-3-hydroxy-proline and trans-4-hydroxy-proline and KHK provided these small natural products with excellent functional groups to AnalytiCon for the development of new compound libraries.

Only 18 months after the beginning of the co-operation in 2002, both companies confirmed the first biologically and medically validated active compounds, which could form the basis for innovative drugs.

AnalytiCon and Kyowa - both specialists in different areas of natural product-based identification of physiologically active compounds - agreed to combine their complementary know-how in this area to deliver and exploit its potential. Under the terms of the co-operation Potsdam-based AnalytiCon develops compound libraries by means of their proprietary NatDiverse(TM) technology, a combination of natural product and combinatorial chemistry. Kyowa Hakko's Biochemical Division is responsible for the production of bulk amounts of selected natural products as starting material. Kyowa Hakko's Pharmaceutical Division is responsible for the screening of the NatDiverse(TM) arrays and will identify, validate and further develop any medically relevant compounds.

With view to the impressive results the companies are extending their co-operation. Studies for future natural products as starting points for drug development are continued by combining both companies' microbial strain collections producing unique metabolites.

Dr. Hirofumi Nakano, Director of Kyowa Hakko's BioFrontier Laboratories, commenting on the plans to extend the co-operation with AnalytiCon, said: "The milestones - thanks to AnalytiCon's technology - have been reached in a very short time, are a strong incentive to continue our co-operation in this promising sector applying our technology and capacity."

Dr. Lutz Müller-Kuhrt, CEO of AnalytiCon, giving a positive outlook on future prospects of the co-operation with Kyowa Hakko said: "Looking at the results achieved so far and on both companies' expertise in the fields of natural product screening and production, we are studying the next phase of the co-operation so that we will be able to deliver new valuable nature derived compound libraries to the pharmaceutical industry."

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