Kinaxo Biotechnologies GmbH, of Martinsried, was awarded a Euro 1 million grant from the German Ministry for Education and Research to develop a technology platform for quantifying interactions between small molecule drugs and proteins in mammalian tissues and cell lines.
The research will be supported by two academic collaborators, Dr Lothar Jänsch of the Helmholtz Institute in Braunschweig and Dr Henrik Daub of the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried.
Klaus Godl, Kinaxo’s Head of Research said the work involves combining quantitative mass spectrometry with the company’s KinaTor technology. “With this new set-up we can immediately distinguish relevant drug-protein interactions from weak binding, as well as determining a compound’s affinity, without the need of in vitro assays.”
“Having a proven track record as a kinase specialist we will now start to analyse the target profiles of other inhibitor classes such as protease and phosphatase inhibitors as well as drugs that failed in the clinic due to off-target effects.”
Kinaxo provides range of drug discovery services based on its chemical proteomics technology platform KinaTor, which can be used to identify and characterise the interaction of small molecule inhibitors with their cellular protein targets. The system can identifies toxic off-target effects early in development, contributing to higher success rates.
The company has collaborations with a number of pharmaceutical companies, including Johnson & Johnson and UCB Pharma.
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