KINAXO Receives 1 M Euro Funding to Quantify Drug Interactions

Martinsried, Germany, July 16, 2007. KINAXO Biotechnologies GmbH announced today that it has received research funding of about € 1 million from the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF). This will enable KINAXO to establish a universally applicable technology platform to quantify small molecule-protein interactions in mammalian tissues and cell lines. Implementation of the new technologies will be supported by two leading experts, Dr. Lothar Jänsch of the Helmholtz Institute in Braunschweig and Dr. Henrik Daub of the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried.

Klaus Godl, KINAXO’s Head of Research says: “Combining quantitative mass spectrometry with the KinaTorTM technology significantly strengthens our chemical proteomics capabilities. With this new set-up we can immediately distinguish relevant drug-protein interactions from weak binding as well as determine a compound’s affinity without the need of in vitro assays. Having a proven track record as a kinase specialist we will now start to analyse the target profiles of other inhibitor classes such as protease and phosphatase inhibitors as well as drugs that failed in the clinic due to off-target effects.”
About KINAXO

KINAXO Biotechnologies is a privately held biotechnology company based in Martinsried, Germany. We support pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in the development of targeted small molecule drugs with clean selectivity profiles. KINAXO offers its clients a comprehensive chemical proteomics technology platform (KinaTorTM) to identify and characterize the interaction of small molecule inhibitors with their cellular protein targets. The KinaTorTM technology identifies toxic off-target effects early in development and therefore contributes to higher success rates in clinical trials.

KINAXO is funded by VC investors Mountain Partners, KfW, High-Tech Gründerfonds, BioM and the Max Planck Society as well as by its co-founders Axel Ullrich and Hellmut Kirchner. KINAXO maintains collaborations with a number of leading pharmaceutical companies, including Johnson & Johnson and UCB Pharma.