BioFocus and InterMed Discovery GmbH (IMD) have formed  a marketing collaboration to offer enhanced natural product discovery to the pharmaceutical, animal health, and agrochemical industries. No financial details were disclosed.

IMD will make its natural product screening libraries available and provide follow-on services to BioFocus. BioFocus will incorporate these as part of its own integrated drug discovery offerings. BioFocus has a track record of service deals with industry for the discovery of active ingredients.

“We believe that the combination of our natural product capabilities with the discovery capabilities of BioFocus will offer a powerful discovery solution at a time when there is already growing demand from the pharma, veterinary and agro industries to fill depleted pipelines,“ said Dr. Thomas Henkel, co-managing director of InterMed Discovery.

“We have been impressed with the scale of IMD’s natural product discovery capabilities and we believe that when InterMed’s natural product libraries and services are combined with our screening services, our engine for drug discovery will be substantially enhanced and more cost-effective for our clients,” added Dr. Chris Newton, managing director, BioFocus.

Originally developed within Bayer Healthcare AG, the IMD natural product integrated discovery platform consists of one of the industry’s largest natural compound libraries.