Pelago Bioscience AB and AstraZeneca have entered into a 2-year strategic research collaboration and license agreement. The companies will collaborate on specified joint projects and AstraZeneca will also be granted a license to use and apply the Cellular Thermal Shift Assay (CETSA) for determination and quantification of drug–target interactions in other AstraZeneca discovery projects.

During the collaboration Pelago and AstraZeneca will together develop assay formats and applications of the CETSA method relevant across the range of AstraZeneca’s therapeutic areas. The companies will actively share information related to benchmarking and improvement in the use of the technology.

“We are very proud of this collaborative agreement with AstraZeneca. It will allow us to further improve the CETSA method using the knowledge and experience from one of the world’s largest drug discovery companies,” said Michael Dabrowski, chief executive officer, Pelago Bioscience.

Mike Snowden, vice president discovery sciences, AstraZeneca, “CETSA is an exciting technology that will allow us to examine the interaction between a drug candidate and its protein target within the cell. We are pleased to be exploring the potential of this platform in an open collaboration with the scientists at Pelago.”