Immunex and ArQule Collaborate to Develop New Inflammatory Disorder Treatments

Strategic Insights -

Immunex, a leading biopharmaceutical company, and ArQule, a chemistry company specializing in accelerated drug discovery, announced a collaboration to discover and develop new products for the treatment of inflammatory disorders. This partnership will utilize ArQule's Mapping Array program to identify small molecule therapeutics based on a new chemokine gene discovered by Immunex. The collaboration aims to accelerate the identification of specific active drug leads, which could potentially lead to novel treatments for diseases such as acute respiratory distress syndrome, arthritis, atherosclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, and psoriasis.

Key Takeaways:

  • Immunex and ArQule have partnered to develop new treatments for inflammatory disorders, leveraging ArQule's Mapping Array program and Immunex's immune system biology expertise.
  • The collaboration will focus on a new chemokine gene discovered by Immunex, which could lead to the identification of specific active drug leads for treating various inflammatory diseases.
  • ArQule's Mapping Array program utilizes libraries of novel, diverse, small organic, pure compounds for screening against biological targets, accelerating the drug discovery process.
  • The partnership aims to develop novel inhibitors of chemokines, which control the attraction of white blood cells to tissues, essential for inflammation and host response to infection.
  • The collaboration is consistent with Immunex's strategy to capitalize on its discovery of immune system targets and ArQule's strategy to provide complementary drug discovery technologies to maximize the value of its compound arrays and chemistry capabilities.

Statistics:

  • Immunex has discovered a new chemokine gene that could lead to the development of novel treatments for inflammatory disorders.
  • ArQule's Mapping Array program is a high-throughput lead generation and lead optimization technology that accelerates the identification and optimization of drug candidates.
  • The partnership aims to develop novel inhibitors of chemokines, which could potentially treat five major inflammatory diseases, including acute respiratory distress syndrome, arthritis, atherosclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, and psoriasis.
  • Immunex has access to ArQule's proprietary assays that utilize a novel inhibitor of multiple chemokines to identify compounds with biological activity.
  • ArQule's Automated Molecular Assembly Plant (AMAP) parallel synthesis system is used to accelerate the identification and optimization of drug and product development candidates.

Sources:

  • Immunex Corp. /PRNewswire/
  • ArQule, Inc. /PRNewswire/
  • Form 10-K and 10-Q (SEC reports filed by Immunex)
  • Immunex web site (www.immunex.com)
  • ArQule, Inc. web site (www.arqule.com)