The Future Of Genomics At SmithKline Beecham

SmithKline Beecham has announced at a conference held in Paris on DNAresearch that it has formed alliances with two other companies in order to provide itself with access to powerful technology in the area of high-throughput screening and functional genomics.

The collaborations, with the biotechnology company Cadus Pharmaceutical of Tarrytown, USA, and Evotec BioSystems of Hamburg, Germany, will significantly increase SB's drug discovery abilities, it says.

The five-year collaboration with Cadus is intended to use Cadus' technology for the expression and functional coupling of human cellular receptors in yeast, with the focus on G-protein coupled receptors which currently have unknown functions, and which have a proven importance as therapeutic targets. Tools provided by Cadus will allow the function of the receptors to be unravelled; high-throughput screens will then distinguish which chemical compounds interact with these receptors, and therefore have potential as therapeutics.