The biotech companies SARomics Biostructures and Xbrane Bioscience have signed a strategic partnership for “off-the-shelf” protein structures. The two companies will combine their expertise within their respective fields to deliver “off-the-shelf” protein structure services.
The “off-the-shelf” concept is a service product that simplifies and de-risks drug discovery activities. It is targeted towards structure-based design projects where protein structure information is used to accelerate the drug discovery process. In an “off-theshelf” product, crystals suitable for X-ray crystallographic studies of the protein in question have already been obtained. In a service project the protein can thus, within a very short turn-around time, be co-crystallised with a customers’ compounds, revealing the mode of interaction of the compound with the protein target without the necessity for the customer to build up the same expertise in-house.
In this partnership the advanced structural biology platform and expertise contributed by SARomics Biostructures will be used to produce, crystallize and determine the structure of a number of challenging proteins belonging to the epigenetic pathway. Targeting proteins involved in epigenetic mechanisms (the cellular processes associated with the modification of chromatin) has emerged as an important new therapeutic opportunity for treating cancer, diabetes, inflammatory diseases and more. Xbrane Bioscience will provide its world leading know-how and proprietary technology within protein expression in order to produce the selected “off-the-shelf” proteins.
Björn Walse, CEO of SARomics Biostructures, said “We are excited about the opportunity to work with Xbrane Bioscience on this frontline project that clearly leverages the competitiveness of both companies”.
“The agreement with SARomics is an important step for our growth strategy and gives us an opportunity to demonstrate our capabilities within optimization of protein production in E. coli”, Says Siavash Bashiri, CEO at Xbrane Bioscience.
Source: SARomics Biostructures
