Under the terms of the alliance, Nuevolution’s proprietary Chemetics drug discovery technology will be applied to identify novel small molecule lead compounds against a range of drug targets proposed by Lexicon.
Nuevolution will receive an upfront payment and will be eligible for milestone payments and royalties on compounds identified using its technology as candidate molecules progress through preclinical and clinical development and onto the market. At a future point in time, Nuevolution will have the option to expand its involvement in certain programs under a cost and profit sharing arrangement.
The collaboration will harness the power of Nuevolution’s Chemetics platform technology which enables both hit identification and hit-to-lead optimization by exploration of ultra large chemistry space through the screening of multiple fragment-based small molecule libraries of more than 100 million compounds per library.
Brian Zambrowicz, executive vice president and chief scientific officer of Lexicon, said: “This important alliance is designed to accelerate Lexicon’s ability to move from novel knockout validated targets to drug candidates as we continue to build our pipeline of innovative products.”