Myriad Genetics and Biosearch Italia Form Drug Discovery Collaboration; Myriad to Screen Biosearch's

28-Nov-2001

Myriad Genetics, Inc. (Nasdaq: MYGN), and Biosearch Italia (Nuovo Mercato: BIO.MI) have formed a collaboration to discover novel therapeutic compounds, the Company announced today. Biosearch Italia will provide Myriad with access to its natural product compound library. Myriad will select promising drug targets, develop high-throughput screening assays, and screen the assays against Biosearch Italia's natural product libraries.

"This collaboration is an exciting opportunity to discover novel drugs through analysis of naturally occurring bioactive compounds," said Adrian Hobden, President of Myriad Pharmaceuticals, Inc. "The combination of Myriad's novel validated drug targets and Biosearch's proprietary natural products libraries may lead to the development of new therapeutics to treat a variety of important diseases."

Each year, Myriad discovers a large number of promising drug targets in important disease fields using its proprietary proteomic and biopharmaceutical technologies. Myriad will select a small number of these targets for screening against Biosearch's natural product libraries. Over 120 currently prescribed drugs, developed by pharmaceutical companies, were first extracted from natural sources. These include Taxol (from the Pacific Yew Tree), Lovastatin (from an Aspergillus mold), aspirin (from willow bark), and the anticancer drugs vinblastine and vincristine (from a species of periwinkle). This natural product collaboration will supplement the high-throughput screening performed by Myriad on its targets with the Company's existing library of over 200,000 small molecular weight compounds.

"Myriad's collection of drug targets represents an ideal resource for screening against our bioactive compound libraries," said Francesco Parenti, President and Chief Scientific Officer of Biosearch Italia. "This collaboration will enable Biosearch to recognise value from our natural product library outside our core focus of anti-infectives discovery and development."

https://www.chemeurope.com/en/news/6174/myriad-genetics-and-biosearch-italia-form-drug-discovery-collaboration-myriad-to-screen-biosearch-s.html