FREMONT, Calif., Nov. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- DiscoveRx announced today that it has signed an agreement with the National Institutes of Health which will provide initial access to their PathHunter technology for small molecule screening against selected targets of interest to the Molecular Libraries Roadmap Initiative.
PathHunter is a cell-based assay technology ideally suited to high throughput screening that monitors cell signaling pathways. The movement of proteins is monitored in a homogenous assay format within the cell using positional complementation. This approach has been applied to a range of target molecules of interest to drug discovery, including kinases, transcription factors, phosphatases and nuclear hormone receptors, and offers a convenient, non-imaging assay format that is robust and amenable to high throughput automation systems.
“We are very pleased to be working with the NIH Chemical Genomics Center to help accelerate their screening efforts,” stated Dr. Richard Eglen, CSO of DiscoveRx. “We believe that our technology addresses many of the key benefits of more complex cell-based assays that employ imaging, but in a format specifically optimized for higher throughput screening campaigns. Our EFC technology is a proven in vitro biochemical screening method, and the PathHunter products now apply this technology in a novel, whole-cell assay.”
About the NIH Roadmap Initiative
The NIH Roadmap for Medical Research is a series of far-reaching initiatives designed to transform the Nation’s medical research capabilities and speed the movement of scientific discoveries from the bench to the bedside. It provides a framework of the priorities the NIH must address in order to optimize its entire research portfolio and lays out a vision for a more efficient and productive system of medical research. Additional information about the NIH Roadmap can be found at http://nihroadmap.nih.gov /. For more information on the NIH, please visit the NIH Web site at http://www.nih.gov /.
About DiscoveRx Corporation
Founded in 2000, DiscoveRx is a privately held, venture-backed company headquartered in Fremont, California, with an additional office in Birmingham, England. DiscoveRx pioneered the use of beta-galactosidase enzyme fragment complementation in biochemical assays for discovery research, and holds extensive intellectual property in this area. DiscoveRx is dedicated to the development and commercialization of innovative solutions to study GPCRs, Kinases and other major drug target classes, and our products have been adopted in pharmaceutical and biotech drug screening initiatives for a number of years. For more information, visit www.discoverx.com or contact your local technical sales specialist.
DiscoveRx Corporation
CONTACT: Sailaja Kuchibhatla of DiscoveRx, +1-510-979-1415 ext. 104, orskuchibhatla@discoverx.com