The Denmark-based drug discovery company Nuevolution A/S has signed a collaboration deal with Cancer Research Technology to discover anti-cancer drug molecules.

The collaboration aims to identify drug leads that block the activity of a number of cancer therapeutic targets. Through the partnership drug candidate molecules which home in on selected targets will be identified by screening millions of diverse small molecules using Nuevolution’s Chemetics technology. This uses DNA labelling to enable small molecule drug screening, a method used to identify small molecules which bind to a target protein.

According to the agreement Cancer Research Technology (CRT), the commercial arm of Cancer Research UK, will provide expert information about the biology of the targets through Cancer Research UK’s network of scientists. The first targets have already been approved by CRT and Nuevolution for entry into the collaboration. Also, CRT will provide drug discovery expertise including in-vitro screening assays and cellular activity assays for the target proteins to select the most promising molecules to develop as potential drugs.