Materia and Peakdale to collaborate on metathesis-based privileged scaffolds

US company Materia, and UK-based Peakdale Molecular are in collaboration to offer metathesis-based scaffolds for the pharmaceutical industry.

Under the agreement, Peakdale has acquired non-exclusive rights to practise Materia's metathesis intellectual property portfolio for the design, development, and sale of research quantities of the scaffolds.

The partners will jointly identify target compounds, while Peakdale will be primarily responsible for the compounds' development, production and initial distribution.

The collaborators will introduce two new series of privileged scaffolds by the end of 2007, with further series expected to be introduced in 2008. The initial series was selected by Dr Ray Fisher, Peakdale's commercial director, because of its usefulness in exploring novel drug-like space and its suitability to synthesis via metathesis.

'We believe that metathesis is becoming an important tool for drug discovery,' he said. 'Materia is our partner of choice as it is has the broadest metathesis intellectual property position and the active support of the pioneering Nobel Prize winning chemists.'

'Peakdale has demonstrated both strong design and development capabilities as well as considerable insight into the scaffolds of interest to discovery chemists,' said Dr Michael Giardello, Materia's chief executive. 'We are pleased to partner with them to expand metathesis' application in the pharmaceutical industry.'