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Sygnature Discovery, a leading provider of integrated drug discovery services, today announced that it has been selected by CellCentric, a biotechnology company with a scientific foundation in epigenetics, to progress small molecule inhibitor drug discovery against a specific deubiquitinase (DUB) enzyme which has been demonstrated to play a key role in the progression of prostate cancer.

CellCentric recently received £4.3 million through further venture investment and an award from the UK government-backed Technology Strategy Board’s BioMedical Catalyst Fund, to further fuel the DUB programme through to small molecule clinical candidates.  The new agents act upon the androgen receptor (AR) pathway, which is gaining significant interest from the pharmaceutical industry. CellCentric’s approach has the potential to modulate AR and AR splice variants, which could be key to overcoming many of the drug resistance mechanisms which limit the clinical benefit of existing approved and developmental therapeutic agents.
 
Dr Will West, Chief Executive Officer, CellCentric said: “We are delighted with the continued support from our shareholders and from the BioMedical Catalyst award. The further funding should see us progress our main programme through to significant clinical and commercial value.  The application of epigenetics to novel drug discovery is now maturing beyond just the promise of a new scientific area.  We look forward to expanding our excellent relationship with Sygnature Discovery who have a growing reputation for high quality integrated drug discovery services, and who will help us to achieve our corporate goals.”
 
Dr Simon Hirst, Chief Executive Officer, Sygnature Discovery said: “We are pleased that CellCentric has selected Sygnature Discovery to be its drug discovery partner.  Epigenetics is a rapidly evolving field and this is an exciting opportunity for us to work on an unexplored and challenging drug target which has been shown to be critical in prostate cancer.  Sygnature has considerable in-house oncology drug discovery knowledge and having medicinal chemistry, computational chemistry and in vitro screening under one roof will enable us to accelerate CellCentric’s prostate cancer programme towards the clinic.”

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