WuXi AppTec, announced that its Research Service Division (RSD) will collaborate with Pelago Bioscience, a Swedish biotech company to provide target engagement assays with Pelago's patented Cellular Thermal Shift Assay (CETSA) method.
Target engagement is pivotal to targeted drug efficacy. Pelago's CETSA method enables target engagement quantifications of the physiologically relevant form of the target in live cells and tissue samples, accelerating the discovery of high quality drugs.
The collaboration between WuXi RSD and Pelago will help more pharmaceutical R&D and biotech companies worldwide leverage the CETSA method to develop new and better drugs more quickly and cost-effectively.
"We are excited and very proud to be working with WuXi RSD, adding our target engagement quantifications to their full value chain service portfolio," said Dr. Michael Dabrowski, CEO of Pelago Bioscience. "This collaboration, with a global service provider will enable more CETSA data to benefit existing and new customers."
"The CETSA platform is highly complementary to our own structural biology and biophysical assay platforms and capabilities," said Dr. Steve Yang, Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer of WuXi AppTec and head of WuXi RSD.
"We are very enthusiastic about the potential of the CETSA platform to rapidly deliver detailed target engagement information to our clients to inform their discovery programs."
Dr. Ismail Moarefi, Chief Science Officer of Crelux, WuXi RSD's structural biology subsidiary in Munich, Germany, added, "By collaborating with Pelago Bioscience we can pool our own expertise in protein production, biophysical assays for hit validation and crystallisation with the CETSA target engagement technology and create a combined platform that informs structure based drug design in a powerful new way."