Cancer Drug Discovery Collaboration Announcement

Enamine Ltd., a chemical company, producer of novel chemical building blocks and screening libraries, and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) have agreed to establish a collaboration whereby Enamine provides library synthesis, medicinal chemistry and biological services for the discovery and development of novel small molecules against EMBL’s proprietary anti-cancer targets. The collaboration involves the deployment of a team of Full Time Equivalent (FTE) medicinal chemists at Enamine. This team will focus on the project’s multiple objectives towards creating new cancer therapeutics with novel modes of action.

Joe Lewis, Head of Chemical Biology Core Facility at EMBL commented: “We have been working with Enamine for several years, primarily to enhance the chemical space of our internal screening library. We realized quickly that their 2 million plus compound collection provides quality compounds allowing an increase in the chemical diversity of our screening deck. When we decided to outsource our important medicinal chemistry discovery program in Europe, Enamine was the obvious choice. We are convinced that the company best complements and enhances our core expertise in the interdisciplinary field of chemical biology and drug development.”

David Will, Head of Medicinal Chemistry at EMBL added: “This collaboration with Enamine will be pivotal for the success of our project for identifying targets from phenotypic screens and synthesizing and triaging new patentable preclinical compounds. Their agility and flexibility with access to the world’s largest collection of building blocks in stock at Enamine and integration of chemistry with a comprehensive biology service portfolio perfectly fit our goal of nominating a preclinical development candidate by 2018.”

“Our collaboration with EMBL illustrates our established engagement with non-profit academic research institutions and disease foundations in their search for strong and committed partners in the most challenging discovery research projects. We look forward to our continued successful work with EMBL”, concluded Michael Bossert, Head Strategic Alliances at Enamine.