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Bionaut Pharmaceuticals and AnalytiCon Discovery Enter into a Lead Optimization Collaboration for a Novel Class of Anti-Cancer Compounds

Posted on: Thursday, 14 April 2005, 09:00 CDT

Bionaut Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and AnalytiCon Discovery GmbH announced today a service and collaboration agreement to identify novel anti-cancer compounds that inhibit the ability of tumor cells to survive stress conditions. Bionaut will provide to the collaboration a series of compounds that have shown potent in vivo activity in various human tumor xenograft models and use its Sentinel(R) Pathway Reporter System to validate new compounds. AnalytiCon will apply its natural product and medicinal chemistry expertise to optimize the activity and selectivity of these compounds for further pre-clinical development by Bionaut. Financial terms were not disclosed.

"We are delighted to have the chemistry team at AnalytiCon developing novel analogues for our lead program in cancer," said Thomas Klein, Chief Operating Officer of Bionaut. "We believe their unique combination of expertise in natural products and analog medicinal chemistry will provide the fastest route to identify novel drug candidates to take forward towards human clinical studies."

"The novel biological screening capabilities of Bionaut, combined with our exceptional integrated natural product-related expertise, make this a unique partnership," said Lutz Muller-Kuhrt, Ph.D., CEO of AnalytiCon Discovery. "Bionaut's whole cell assays, which were used to identify this class of compounds that target tumor cells' response to stress, can also be used to rapidly validate the selectivity and efficacy of the compound analogues we develop for Bionaut."

Bionaut's Cancer Program

Cellular signaling pathways regulate proliferation, angiogenesis and cell death. Cancer cells have adapted these pathways to allow tumors to survive and grow under stress conditions. In addition, exposure to most chemotherapeutic agents further induces stress. These treated cancer cells survive by secreting growth factors which are responsible for proliferation and angiogenesis and which block cell death.

Bionaut has applied its Sentinel(R) Pathway Reporter System to selectively measure the activity of cellular signaling pathways in cancer cells. Bionaut has identified BNC4, as well as other compounds in this class, which specifically inhibit the ability of cancer cells to grow under stress conditions in a variety of in vitro studies. Excellent in vivo activity has been demonstrated in human renal, pancreatic and non-small cell lung cancer xenograft models.

Bionaut Pharmaceuticals

Bionaut's business strategy is to discover novel small molecule drug candidates that affect well-validated disease pathways and to advance such discoveries through late stage pre-clinical status for further development in partnership with pharmaceutical and large biotechnology companies. Bionaut employs its patented Sentinel(R) Pathway Reporter System to initiate the discovery process. Bionaut's Sentinel system can greatly increase the chances of a positive clinical outcome for a new drug candidate by correlating pathway-specific interference directly with disease modulation in living human cells. Bionaut has applied the highly predictive capabilities of its Sentinel(R) system to build a pipeline of its own drug candidates in the areas of cancer and inflammation and continues to expand its efforts to other therapeutic areas. In addition, Bionaut will assist strategic partners with drug discovery and lead optimization in disease areas of their choice. More information about Bionaut can be found on the Company's website at www.bionautpharma.com.

AnalytiCon Discovery GmbH: (www.analyticon-discovery.com)

The internationally operating AnalytiCon Discovery GmbH is a worldwide market-leader in the field of structurally fully elucidated natural product libraries. On the basis of its ready-to-screen technology in the field of natural products (MEGAbolite(R)) and natural product analogues (NatDiverse(TM)) the company enjoys an exceptional market positioning. AnalytiCon has direct access to roughly a quarter of all known natural compounds worldwide, i.e. in their pure and structurally fully elucidated form. The company is able to offer its clients a complete Supply-Chain-Management from the initial biomaterial to the final lead compound.

Source: Business Wire

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