Sunesis Pharmaceuticals
Sunesis Pharmaceuticals has been granted a US patent (No. 6,335,155) covering its pharmaceutical lead discovery technology, known as tethering. Sunesis is focusing on well-validated disease intervention pathways where conventional discovery approaches have not been successful. The patent claims cover methods for discovering binding elements, called 'monophores', that are selected by a biological target and then can be rapidly identified by mass spectrometry. The methods allow for rapid screening of libraries of monophores to identify initial lead compounds against biological targets.