Chiroscience Forges Two New Alliances

UK company Chiroscience has forged two new collaborations, one withHewlett-Packard and the other with US-based Trega Biosciences (formerly Houghten Pharmaceuticals).

The first, with Hewlett-Packard, is for the design of a new, accelerated system for DNA analysis. The system will combine Chiroscience's Mass Spectrometry Tag technology with HP's analytical instrumentation. The highly-automated product could reach the market by 1998, says the company.

The Trega Biosciences collaboration aims to generate small-molecule libraries targeted at inhibiting cell adhesion molecules which are involved in a variety of diseases including inflammation and cancer. The collaboration will utilize Chiroscience's knowledge of the selectin family, which stems from its discovery of non-carbohydrate selectin inhibitors, with Trega's knowledge of high-throughput, solid-phase combinatorial chemistry. The libraries will form the basis for licensing agreements with third-party pharmaceutical companies, with proceeds to be shared equally between the two collaborators.