van Rooijen & Partners is proud to have mediated a business deal between Boehringer Ingelheim and NascaCell IP. <<
Press release.
Boehringer Ingelheim and NascaCell announce research collaboration on aptamers.
Munich, Germany, February 16, 2005.
Boehringer Ingelheim and NascaCell announced today that they have entered into a research collaboration on aptamer based target validation and drug discovery. Under the agreement, NascaCell will provide Boehringer with custom aptamers for therapeutic targets.
"We are delighted to work together with Boehringer’s high-class research team", said Dr. Andreas Jenne, NascaCell’s managing director. “Within our collaboration aptamers will be used to identify new druggable sites on protein targets. Our approach takes advantage of the unique properties of aptamers to specifically inactivate a particular functional epitope of a protein. Such aptamers may be subsequently used to discover novel small molecule lead compounds.”
“We are looking forward to exploring the benefits of NascaCell’s aptamer platform for our research programs”, emphasizes Dr M Pairet, Senior Vice-President Research, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Biberach/Riss (Germany). “We believe that aptamers may have the potential to complement our inhouse target validation and drug discovery activities for several target classes of primary interest for our scientists.”
About Aptamers
Aptamers are small synthetic nucleic acid ligands that bind target proteins with nanomolar affinities and high specificities. Aptamers have been used for target validation in cell culture and animal models with excellent results. Aptamers can be easily integrated into rational drug design approaches or HTS to identify small molecule inhibitors. Aptamer screening assays require no labelling of targets or compounds, need only short development times, and are characterized by their excellent reproducibility. The aptamer approach is especially useful when no natural ligand is known or new druggable sites on a protein shall be explored.
About Boehringer Ingelheim (www.boehringer-ingelheim.com):
The Boehringer Ingelheim group is one of the world’s 20 leading pharmaceutical companies. Headquartered in Ingelheim, Germany, it operates globally with 152 affiliates in 45 countries and more than 34,000 employees. Since it was founded in 1885, the family-owned company has been committed to researching, developing, manufacturing and marketing novel products of high therapeutic value for human and veterinary medicine. In 2003, Boehringer Ingelheim posted net sales of 7.4 billion euro while spending more than one fifth of net sales in its largest business segment, Prescription Medicines, on research and development.
About NascaCell (www.nascacell.de):
NascaCell IP GmbH, located in Munich, Germany, is a worldwide leading provider of custom aptamers for target validation and drug discovery. The company holds an exquisite patent position in the field with access to over 350 patents and patent applications. Based on its aptamer platform NascaCell pursues drug discovery and development programs in strategic partnerships with pharmaceutical companies. NascaCell’s automated in vitro selection platform (SELEXTM) allows the rapid generation of aptamers for almost any target of choice (e.g. kinases, proteases, growth factors, and protein-protein interactions). To meet the requirements of different applications NascaCell offers characterized and bio-stable aptamers with different kinds of site-specific labels (e.g. fluorescent dyes, affinity tags).
Contact
Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH
Ute E Schmidt
External Communications
Tel +49 (0)6132 779 72 96
Fax +49 (0)6132 77 66 01
NascaCell IP GmbH
Dr. Andreas Jenne
Tel +49 (0)89 54 72 72 0
Mobile +49 (0)172 8710562
a.jenne@nascacell.de