MerLion Pharmaceuticals Pte Ltd and Cancer Research Technology Announce Drug Discovery Collaboration

21-Sep-2005

MerLion Pharmaceuticals Pte Ltd and Cancer Research Technology Ltd (CRT) have entered into a large-scale screening programme to identify new anti-cancer drug candidates derived from natural product chemistry.

Within the collaboration MerLion will screen their natural compound collection against high throughput screens developed by scientists at CRT in order to isolate new therapeutic compounds against validated cancer targets. Targets will be selected from research carried out by Cancer Research UK and CRT's other academic partners.

Following the identification of lead compounds, it is anticipated that the expertise in medicinal chemistry both at MerLion and CRT will be utilised to perform compound optimisation. The companies will work in close partnership throughout the target selection and screening process. The results of the collaboration will be jointly owned.

This international partnership follows the Joint Statement on Science, Engineering and Technology signed by Prime Ministers Lee Hsien Loong and Tony Blair on 4th July 2005, building on the UK-Singapore Partners in Science initiative.

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