Pfizer buys licence for UK Astex enzyme

UK biotechnology firm Astex Therapeutics has granted Pfizer a licence for its enzyme technology.

The non-exclusive worldwide agreement sees Pfizer paying an undisclosed upfront sum for the licence to use Astex’s Cytochromes P450 (CYP450) enzymes.

Harren Jhoti, Astex chief scientific officer and acting chief executive, said: “This agreement is an example of Astex’s commitment to making its human Cytochrome P450 technology available to other companies who could benefit or are already benefiting from its application in the discovery and development of novel drugs with reduced metabolic liabilities.

“We expect that the application of Astex’s groundbreaking research, which was published in Nature and Science, will benefit many companies’ drug discovery and development programmes.”

The human enzyme is used in drug development as they can be the cause of adverse drug reactions to many marketed drugs and drug-combination therapies. Many failures of new drugs are put down to their reaction to these enzymes.

Astex was the first group in the world to successfully determine the structure of a human cytochrome P450 enzyme and has recently been issued with patent GB2395718 covering the use of the crystal structure of human cytochrome P450 3A4.

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