Enzymlogic granted with NEOTEC funding

Technology-based company Enzymlogic has been granted with NEOTEC funding by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through its Industrial Technological Development Centre (CDTI).

Best of the best projects

NEOTEC is one of the most competitive and renowned Spanish funding programs that recognizes the top innovation-driven SMEs. The selection process is made through competitive calls for proposals with the aim of supporting the implementation of the most outstanding technology or knowledge-based business projects generated from research activity.

Competition was fierce: Proposals had to survive a rigorous review process where only the most prominent SMEs got funding. Among over 640 projects submitted to this call, but only 53 projects were funded, with a corresponding success rate of 8%. Enzymlogic occupied the 11th position in the overall ranking of approved NEOTEC projects, which reinforces the strong value proposition of its research projects.

Binding kinetics

Drugs’ binding kinetics determine how fast a drug and its target associate and dissociate. Drug’s dissociation rate from its target is key to understanding how to discover better drugs and reduce costs by withdrawing ineffective or unsafe molecules earlier in the drug discovery process.

During the next two years, Enzymlogic will design and develop a robust and highly sensitive binding kinetics platform that can be applied to high throughput kinetic screening and kinetic selectivity profiling to guide the affinity and kinetic optimization of GPCR drugs. Enzymlogic’s GPCR binding kinetics platform will allow the study of how long drugs stay bound to their targets, helping researchers optimize the temporal and functional response profiles of future drug candidates.

Bound to work better

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are the largest class of membrane proteins in the human genome. These receptors sense a variety of signaling molecules, activate multiple intracellular signal pathways, and act as therapeutic targets of over 40% of marketed drugs. These proteins are active in just about every organ system and present a wide range of opportunities as therapeutic targets in areas including cardiovascular disease, asthma, diabetes, pain, obesity, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and several forms of cancer.

Pharmacological characterization of GPCR ligands has traditionally focused on potency and efficacy, where concentration-dependent parameters are measured at equilibrium. There is, however, a growing evidence for the physiological relevance of the temporal aspects of ligand-GPCRs interactions and the need of applying binding kinetics to optimize the temporal and functional response profiles of future drug candidates.

Compounds with identical affinity for a given GPCR can exhibit very different kinetic profiles, which may result in the differentiation of the clinical responses: clinical drug efficacy, safety, duration of action and therapeutic differentiation.

About Enzymlogic

Enzymlogic offers in vitro biochemical and cell-based assays to the biotechnological and pharmaceutical companies, life science laboratories and academic groups. Our binding kinetics, kinetic selectivity, assay development, profiling and screening services enable faster and cost-effective drug discovery by identifying the most promising drug candidates as well as withdrawing those compounds likely to fail in pre-clinical development. Additionally, Enzymlogic’s pioneering approach provides predictive tools that deliver physiologically relevant insights earlier in the drug discovery process.

About CDTI

The Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI) is a Public Business Entity, answering to the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, which fosters the technological development and innovation of Spanish companies. It is the entity that channels the funding and support applications for national and international R&D&i projects of Spanish companies.