The collaboration will bring together the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Centre’s and the The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR)’s knowledge of the genetics, biochemistry and cell biology of breast cancer and Domainex’s capability to discover drugs using its LeadBuilder hit-finding platform technology and medicinal chemistry team. The objective of the collaboration is to bring forward inhibitors of both targets to the proof-of-concept stage in breast cancer models and then to partner the programmes with larger organizations for clinical development.

Dr Eddy Littler, Chief Executive Officer of Domainex, commented: ’Domainex is excited about this collaboration with the Breakthrough Centre and the ICR that will lead to treatments for a major disease that affects the lives of many patients and their families. The collaboration validates Domainex’s position as the drug discovery partner of choice for biotech and university groups, and will also greatly enhance Domainex’s internal drug discovery pipeline in oncology.

’Breakthrough, the ICR and Domainex bring complementary skills to the collaboration. The Breakthrough Breast Cancer Centre at the ICR occupies a pre-eminent position in breast cancer research and will enable the collaboration to gain a greater understanding of the role of these two targets in breast cancer as well as access to a number of powerful and unique systems that will allow us to study the biochemistry and cell biology of inhibitors. Domainex will apply its platform technologies, including LeadBuilder and Medicinal Chemistry, to identify robust hits and develop them rapidly into leads. This collaboration will greatly increase the prospect of identifying and developing inhibitors of tankyrase and IKK-epsilon for the treatment of breast cancer patients.’