PhoreMost Achieves Second Milestone in Target Discovery Alliance With Boehringer Ingelheim
PhoreMost Ltd., has triggered a second milestone payment in its multi-project target discovery collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim. This was achieved by identifying and validating novel targets supporting Boehringer Ingelheim’s ambition to develop first-in-class therapies, to transform patients’ lives.
PhoreMost and Boehringer Ingelheim entered a multi-project collaboration back in January 2020. In this second project, PhoreMost is deploying its in-house expertise and next-generation phenotypic screening platform, SITESEEKER, toward novel disease-relevant pathways focusing on retinal health, a key research area of Boehringer Ingelheim. The first milestone payment was triggered in January 2023, following successful target identification and validation in a separate project under the same collaboration.
Dr. Neil Torbett, Chief Executive Officer of PhoreMost, said “Achieving this second milestone, in what has been a terrific collaboration between ourselves and the Boehringer Ingelheim team, demonstrates the power of the SITESEEKER platform and the partnership moving forward. We remain very excited about the potential of our technology to identify novel drug targets across a range of therapeutic areas, and to contribute to the development of first-in-class therapeutics for patients in need.”
As with targets previously identified under the collaboration, Boehringer Ingelheim will continue the development of potential new therapies against these targets, leading to potential further success based pre-clinical, clinical and commercial milestone payments.
Powered by its proprietary SITESEEKER technology, PhoreMost is developing a pipeline of novel E3-ligase based “next-generation” degrader therapeutics.
Targeted Protein Degradation (TPD) is a promising new way to eliminate toxic or disease-associated targets from cells, with degradation-based therapies now becoming an integral approach to tackling undruggable targets. However, despite there being over 600 known E3 ligases, the pharma industry is currently reliant upon a very small number, such as Cereblon, for degrader-based drug development.
Harnessing the SITESEEKER platform, PhoreMost is progressing a portfolio of novel degrader programs specifically tailored to identify functionally active binding sites on novel E3 ligases in oncology and inflammatory diseases. This unique “function-first” approach provides the company with the ability to unlock TPD’s full potential, enabling the discovery and progression of E3 ligases with both target-specific and tissue-selective activities.
PhoreMost also has a number of disclosed alliances with partners, including: Roche, Otsuka, Boehringer Ingelheim and Sentinel Oncology. For more information, visit www.phoremost.com.
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