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PhoreMost, the UK-based biopharmaceutical company dedicated to drugging ‘undruggable’ disease targets, has announced it has entered into a structural biology focussed collaboration with the Centre for Chemical Biology and Therapeutics (CCBT), Bangalore, India.

CCBT at the Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine (inStem) is funded by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India,. The aim of the collaboration is the structural visualisation of novel druggable sites across multiple targets, to rapidly advance new therapies.

PhoreMost’s next-generation phenotypic screening platform SITESEEKER® probes the entire proteome in a live cell environment for novel druggable targets, enabling the systematic unmasking of cryptic druggable sites. PhoreMost has built a pipeline of novel targets and early drug discovery programmes using this platform, and the new collaboration will draw on CCBT’s structural and chemical biology expertise to progress selected targets within PhoreMost’s discovery portfolio.

CCBT is a state-of-the-art multidisciplinary effort, which was formed to pioneer innovative approaches to create chemical tools that modulate novel classes of targets. The Centre integrates biochemistry, genetics and cell biology with structural biology, computational chemistry and synthetic chemistry.

Dr Chris Torrance CEO of PhoreMost, said: “Since its inception, PhoreMost’s model has been to forge a new approach to drug discovery, working collaboratively with partners in order to progress new medicines. We are delighted to announce this alliance with the CCBT and inStem, which represents an important milestone for PhoreMost and has enormous potential to rapidly advance new therapies.”

Professor Apurva Sarin, Director, inStem said: "We are very pleased with the partnership forged between Phoremost and the CCBT under Prof. Ashok Venkitaraman's leadership, and look forward to exciting outcomes from this effort."

Professor Satyajit Mayor, Director, NCBS, and former Director, inStem, said: “We are very excited to announce this collaboration with PhoreMost. The ability of PhoreMost’s SITESEEKER platform to identify first-in-class drug targets together with functional peptide ligands is highly complementary to the structural biology capabilities at inStem and the CCBT. We look forward to supporting drug discovery against these targets to progress the next generation of therapeutics.”

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