London, UK and Cambridge, UK, 20th October 2015 / Sciad Newswire / Domainex Ltd. and Imperial College London today announce a new partnership focused on the discovery of novel therapies to treat myocardial infarction, also known as a heart attack. This follows the success of Imperial in securing £3M in funding from the Wellcome Trust Seeding Drug Discovery programme to build upon the pioneering research of Professor Michael Schneider, the British Heart Foundation Simon Marks Chair in Regenerative Cardiology.
One of the key research activities of Professor Schneider’s group in Imperial’s National Heart and Lung Institute is to identify the enzyme pathways activated by cardiac stress that result in the apoptosis (programmed cell death) of cardiac muscle cells. The potential for using these findings to prevent cardiac muscle cell death following a heart attack has resulted in this research award from the Wellcome Trust. Domainex has been chosen as Imperial’s strategic drug discovery partner to provide services including biochemical and biophysical assay development, compound screening and medicinal chemistry to advance the project towards pre-clinical development.
Professor Schneider said, “Our target is activated, invariably, in diseased human hearts, and its suppression already protects human heart muscle cells from dying in the laboratory. If we can succeed in taking this forward as a new therapy for myocardial infarction, this would have major benefits for patients, their families, and healthcare providers alike.” He added “Based upon Domainex’s knowledge and approach to drug discovery, we anticipate a fruitful collaboration with them”.
Eddy Littler, Chief Executive Officer of Domainex said, “We are very pleased to have been selected by Professor Schneider and his world-renowned team at Imperial College London to work with his team in the pursuit of drug candidates to treat myocardial infarction. Domainex has supported a number of academic groups in securing funding from the Wellcome Trust and other funding bodies to help them advance their early stage discoveries towards clinical development.”
The Heart Research Institute reports that there are over 124,000 heart attacks in the UK each year. Many progress over time to heart failure (inadequate function of the heart as a biomechanical pump), which places a significant burden on the National Health Service.
Domainex will undertake integrated lead identification and optimisation studies on the serine/threonine protein kinase enzyme target mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase kinase kinase 4 (MAP4K4). In this collaboration Domainex will seek to deliver candidate drug molecules meeting a series of defined criteria.
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