Date: 2016-07-14
Type of information: R&D agreement
Compound: medicines that target disease causing proteins for degradation (PROTACs)
Company: Boehringer Ingelheim (Germany) University of Dundee (UK)
Therapeutic area:
Type agreement: R&D collaboration
Action mechanism:
Disease:
Details: * On July 14, 2016, Boehringer Ingelheim and the University of Dundee will join forces in an exciting collaboration with the aim to develop a novel class of medicines that target disease causing proteins for degradation. The collaboration brings together the expertise of Dr Alessio Ciulli, one of the pioneers in the field of PROTACs and based in the School of Life Sciences at Dundee, with Boehringer Ingelheim’s expertise in drug discovery and clinical development of new therapeutic agents. PROTACs are designed to harness the cell’s natural disposal system (the ubiquitin-proteasome) to specifically remove disease causing proteins. They do this by triggering the labelling of these as “expired” proteins, which the proteasome then removes. PROTACs are anticipated to be broadly applicable to therapeutic areas as diverse as oncology, immunology and respiratory diseases. It opens up opportunities to target disease mechanisms that have been difficult to reach with existing modalities. The collaboration will not only build on recent ground-breaking work of Dr. Ciulli and his team, but will also benefit from top facilities and expertise available within the School of Life Sciences at Dundee, including the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit headed by Prof. Dario Alessi, and the FingerPrint Proteomics Facility, co-directed by Prof. Mike Ferguson and Prof. Angus Lamond and managed by Dr. Douglas Lamont.
To trigger the degradation of target proteins, PROTACs are made of a moiety that binds the target and a moiety that binds a ubiquitin ligase enzyme, and as a result they are likely to exceed the size of conventional oral drug molecules.
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