BioWorld International Correspondent

Dutch biotechnology firm Screentec has a new name. The Leiden-based company is now called Kiadis BV, a move intended to underscore the company’s goal of adding drug discovery to its high-throughput molecular screening and analysis capabilities.

The move represents the first visible step in the execution of a new business plan drafted by former pharmaceutical industry executive Gerard Dijkstra, who joined as CEO in January. Dijkstra, previously head of biotechnology at the Solvay Pharmaceuticals arm of Brussels-based Solvay SA, said entering collaborations with partners that have validated targets is now a top priority.

“Universities are of particular interest here,” he told BioWorld International. Kiadis aims to marry its platform, which integrates biological assays with high performance liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry, with the deep domain knowledge of academic researchers. “We can plug in there quite easily. Our story is quite simple. We can set up these assays quite fast,” he said.

Kiadis, which was spun out from the University of Leiden in 1997, specializes in fishing out from complex mixtures lead molecules that act on targets of interest. Its platform technology can be used to screen mixtures derived from natural sources, such as marine animals or plants, from human tissues and from expanded or nonpurified combinatorial chemistry. The company validated its platform through an extensive technology transfer project with Bayer AG, of Leverkusen, Germany, and a fee-for-service assignment for Monsanto Co., of St. Louis.

“The first priority for us is to show the whole world as soon as possible we can do this, we can find lead molecules for interesting targets,” Dijkstra said.

The company recently recruited another former Solvay executive, Steve Long, to head up its drug discovery division. Long, like Dijkstra, has extensive experience in the CNS area. Kiadis has not yet made a formal decision but it is considering making that its core focus.

“It makes a lot of sense to step up research in this area,” Dikstra said. “It is not a paper exercise. We are talking with people.”

The company employs 25 people now but plans to grow to 35 employees by the year’s end and to continue recruitment beyond that. Dijkstra said he aims to build an organization capable of running five research programs in parallel, with additional capacity for pharmaceutical industry collaborations. Kiadis raised EUR6.5 million in first-round funding from Life Sciences Partners, of Amsterdam; Prelude Trust, of Cambridge, UK; and Alafi Capital, of San Francisco. It is seeking second-round funding, Dijkstra said.