PhoreMost Limited, the UK-based biopharmaceutical company dedicated to drugging ‘undruggable’ disease targets, has entered into a multi-project collaboration with Japan's Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., the world-leading pharmaceutical company dedicated to the research and development of highly-innovative drugs and diagnostics. Financial details of the agreement are not disclosed.

PhoreMost will deploy its in-house expertise and next-generation phenotypic screening platform, SITESEEKER^®, towards disease relevant pathways nominated by Otsuka. Novel targets identified will be further validated and characterised by Otsuka as part of its internal development pipeline, with an initial focus on gene therapy applications of identified targets.

PhoreMost’s SITESEEKER platform exploits protein shape diversity to find functionally active peptides, significantly enhancing the power of phenotypic screening and translation into therapeutic modalities. Based on proprietary protein interference, or ‘PROTEINi^®’, technology PhoreMost uses SITESEEKER to probe the entire proteome in a live cell environment for novel druggable targets linked to any chosen disease. This enables the systematic discovery of functionally active peptides which are directly linked to useful therapeutic applications.

Dr Chris Torrance, CEO of PhoreMost, said: “This collaboration with Otsuka is further recognition of the power of the SITESEEKER approach to drive the identification of novel, druggable targets. We are particularly excited to be exploring not only small molecule therapeutics but also gene therapy applications of our platform.”