SBI, DuPont Sign $100M Deal For Signaling Proteins

By Mary Welch

Structural Bioinformatics Inc. (SBI) and DuPont Pharmaceuticals Co. signed a deal valued at more than $100 million to discover and develop small-molecule leads in a family of signaling proteins and other targets.

Under the terms of the deal, expected to be disclosed today, Wilmington, Del.-based DuPont will pay for technology access and research support at SBI. The firms will collaborate to identify and optimize lead molecules targeted at receptors for several signaling proteins, and SBI will use protein modeling and virtual screening to identify and optimize small-molecule lead candidates.

¿DuPont represents our first agreement with an American pharmaceutical company, and it represents a major investment on both of our parts,¿ said Jerry Dodd, vice president of corporate development for San Diego-based SBI. He would not disclose the diseases on which the collaboration is focused, but some targets have been identified.

DuPont will handle the preclinical discovery and development of leads, as well as the advancement of small-molecule leads already detected by SBI. DuPont will receive worldwide rights to all products from this program. SBI will receive preclinical and clinical milestone payments, as well as royalties. Further terms were not disclosed.

Founded in 1996, SBI uses a structural bioinformatics system that combines dynamic 3-D protein structure modeling and protein structure-based drug design algorithms to design and identify small-molecule lead compounds.

¿The technology has been successfully applied to six other molecular targets to date, all of which have yielded active small molecules,¿ Dodd said. ¿We use gene sequences to build dynamic 3-D protein structures, and then we extract the dynamic surface information in order to search for small-molecule antagonists or inhibitors.¿

Dodd said the deal is especially satisfying because it ¿represents a narrow application of our technology. [This] leaves us with a broad group of targets that we can partner with other companies.¿ He said he expects more collaborations within the next six months.