Sapient Discovery Initiates a Structural Biology Collaboration with Helicon Therapeutics, Inc.

15 Jun 2024
Sapient Discovery announced that it has entered into a research collaboration agreement with the Helicon Therapeutics, Inc., a San Diego based pharmaceutical company

SAN DIEGO, CA, USA | June 15, 2024 | Sapient Discovery, LLC., a structure-guided drug discovery company, announced today that it has entered into a research collaboration agreement with the Helicon Therapeutics, Inc., a San Diego based pharmaceutical company. Under the terms of the agreement, Sapient Discovery will apply its proprietary structural biology platform and expertise to determine the three-dimensional structures for targets of interest to Helicon Therapeutics, Inc.

In this collaboration, Sapient Discovery will provide Helicon Therapeutics with their complete array of X-ray crystallography and modeling services, including cloning, expression, protein purification, crystallization, co-crystal structure determination for targets selected by Helicon Therapeutics. Information obtained from X-ray crystallographic structures of the target will assist Helicon Therapeutics scientists in structure-based lead design and optimization, enhancing the company's ability to rapidly develop new drug candidates.

"Sapient Discovery has demonstrated that its proprietary crystallography technology accelerates drug discovery and we are excited about establishing this collaboration with Helicon Therapeutics to help advance their programs," stated Dr. Kal Ramnarayan, President and Chief Scientific Officer of Sapient Discovery. "Our crystallography services have solved novel and difficult structures for several of our customers and we are pleased to be able to extend our capabilities in this area to Helicon Therapeutics to aid them in their structure-guided drug discovery efforts," added Dr. Shankari Mylvaganam, Vice President of Research at Sapient Discovery.

"This agreement underlines the commitment of Helicon Therapeutics to advance our internal programs by accessing leading edge technologies for drug discovery. We believe these efforts will significantly accelerate our internal drug discovery and development projects," said Kenneth Johns, Jr. Esq, President and CEO of Helicon Therapeutics.

About Sapient Discovery, LLC.
Sapient Discovery, LLC. is a structure-based drug discovery company with extensive capabilities in computational chemistry and structural biology. The company provides a comprehensive suite of structural services for accelerating and optimizing the drug discovery process for its pharmaceutical and biotechnology partners and clients. The company's service and product offerings include: Genes To LeadsTM to accelerate lead discovery and target validation; Structure Determination Services including X-ray crystallography and augmented homology modeling; Fragments to Leads a platform to generate novel lead molecule with X-ray crystallography and fragment libraries, and StructureBankTM, a database for the large-scale comparative analysis of protein targets and anti-targets. The company has several ongoing projects with small and medium biotechnology companies. For additional information, please visit our website at sapientdiscovery.com.

About Helicon Therapeutics, Inc.
Helicon Therapeutics, headquartered in San Diego, is a pharmaceutical company formed to discover therapeutics to treat disorders of cognition through an understanding of the genetic basis of long-term memory formation. These cognition disorders include memory impairment from stroke or head trauma, age-related disorders of learning and memory, inherited forms of mental retardation and memory loss due to pathological conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. The company currently has six drug programs at various stages of development. Each drug is designed to modulate different aspects of memory formation from short-term memories, such as working memory and executive function, to the conversion of short-term memory to long-term memory.