PhoreMost Ltd., a UK-based biopharmaceutical company dedicated to ‘undruggable’ disease targets, has entered into a multi-project drug discovery collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim. Under the agreement, PhoreMost will receive an upfront payment and research funding as well as success-based milestones. Financial details were not disclosed.

PhoreMost will leverage its next-generation phenotypic screening platform, SITESEEKER, towards disease relevant pathways nominated by Boehringer. Novel targets identified will be further validated and characterized by Boehringer as part of its internal Discovery Research pipeline, which focusses on immunology and respiratory diseases, cardiometabolic diseases, oncology research and immuno-oncology, as well as diseases of the central nervous system.

The SITESEEKER platform is based on PhoreMost’s core protein interference, or ‘PROTEINi’, technology. Using SITESEEKER, PhoreMost probes the entire proteome in a live cell environment for novel druggable targets linked to any chosen disease, using the vast 3-D shape diversity of natural protein fragment (sub-domain) libraries. This aims to enable the systematic unmasking of cryptic druggable sites, directly linking them to useful therapeutic functions.

Dr. Chris Torrance, CEO of PhoreMost, said: “We are delighted that Boehringer Ingelheim has chosen to work with PhoreMost to enhance its drug discovery pipeline with attractive biological starting points. The collaboration is further recognition of the ability of PROTEINi and SITESEEKER to identify novel targets, and we look forward to working with the Boehringer Ingelheim team on these projects.”