e-therapeutics to work with top pharma company

e-therapeutics to work with TOP 5 global PHARMA company on neuroDEGENERATION DRUG DISCOVERY PROJECT

Oxford, UK, 13th August 2019 - e-therapeutics plc (AIM: ETX, "e-therapeutics") is pleased to announce an agreement to work with a global, top five pharmaceutical company, on a project in a specific area of biology associated with neurodegenerative diseases.

Neurodegeneration occurs when there is progressive loss of structure or function of neurons and can lead to a number of debilitating diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and Huntington's.1 There are currently over one billion people globally affected by these conditions.2

Under the 12-month agreement, e-therapeutics will use its proprietary Network-Driven Drug Discovery ("NDD") approach to identify novel disease pathways and small molecules, both of which have the potential to modulate the biology of interest. As part of the project, the company will test the compounds resulting from e-therapeutics' NDD platform in its in-house assays. 

Dr Ray Barlow, CEO at e-therapeutics, said: "We are thrilled to be working with one of the largest global pharma companies in an exciting area of disease biology where there is a significant unmet need. This deal will allow us to directly showcase our Network-Driven Drug Discovery (NDD) technologies to them and the work has the potential to generate new therapeutic assets to add to our existing portfolio. We continue to work on a number of different types of external collaborations and look forward to sharing further news during the remainder of the year."

e-therapeutics will be reimbursed for certain costs it incurs during the execution of this work. Intellectual property rights and know-how from e-therapeutics have not been granted to the company and the results and inventions produced by e-therapeutics during the project will be the sole property of e-therapeutics. 

The pharma partner has also a review period, during which time they will decide whether to negotiate a collaboration with e-therapeutics. In the absence of such an agreement, e-therapeutics will be able to use the results from this project. 

ENDS

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1 Sciencedirect.com. (2019). Neurodegenerative Process - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics. [online] Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/neurodegenerative-process [Accessed 12 Aug. 2019].

2 Who.int. (2019). WHO | Neurological disorders affect millions globally: WHO report. [online] Available at: https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2007/pr04/en/ [Accessed 12 Aug. 2019].

About e-therapeutics

e-therapeutics is an Oxford, UK-based company with a unique and powerful computer-based approach to drug discovery, founded on our industry-leading expertise in network biology.

We have created two proprietary, unique and productive technology platforms. The first is our proprietary Network-Driven Drug Discovery (NDD) platform, which is based on sophisticated network science and employs techniques such as machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI) and state-of-the-art data analysis tools. NDD allows the more efficient discovery of new and better drugs and has been validated in multiple and diverse areas of biology.

The second is our Genome Associated Network Interactions (GAINs) platform. GAINs is a revolutionary and entirely novel approach to functional genomics, based on the same validated network biology and analytics expertise that underpins our NDD technologies. GAINs analyses human genetic data to allow a deep and valuable understanding about the mechanisms that cause disease. GAINs has the potential to uncover unrecognised disease processes and pathways and can enable the discovery of novel drugs, diagnostics and biomarkers in a way not previously possible from population genomics data, such as genome-wide association studies (GWAS).

We use our highly productive drug discovery engine to develop our own IP-protected, pre-clinical drug discovery programmes, particularly appealing to partners looking to acquire or in-license novel and differentiated assets. We are currently developing two programmes in immuno-oncology in-house and have a number of partner-ready projects in areas including fibrosis and the tumour microenvironment.

We have a partnership with Novo Nordisk in type 2 diabetes and are working on different types of collaborative partnerships with biotech, pharma and other technology companies to create sustainable mutual value.