PARIS ¿ Hybrigenics and Institut Pasteur signed an exclusive research collaboration covering the application of the former¿s expertise in functional proteomics to the field of infectious diseases.

This agreement extends the scientific alliance concluded in 1998 between Paris-based Hybrigenics and the Institute Pasteur, a not-for-profit private medical research establishment, which essentially granted Hybrigenics rights to functional proteomics technologies developed by Pasteur, as well as priority access to data in the specific area of protein-protein interactions.

Based on the technology licensed from Pasteur, Hybrigenics has established an integrated functional proteomics platform for identifying and validating drug candidates. At the same time, the partners have carried out joint research programs resulting in the filing of five patent applications and the joint publication of six scientific papers, including the first protein interaction map for a human pathogenic bacterium (Helicobacter pylori).

While that alliance covered various therapeutic fields, this new collaboration provides for the organizations¿ researchers to cooperate in the validation of therapeutic targets in the specific area of infectious diseases.

Hybrigenics CEO Donny Strosberg said this collaboration ¿will make it possible to discover new anti-infectives and enable further advances to be made in the treatment of serious infections affecting large populations around the world.¿

Hybrigenics already is engaged in a long-term collaboration with another Paris-based medical research establishment, Institut Curie, aimed at unraveling the mechanisms of cell development and the proliferation of cancer cells in humans, and in May the two organizations signed an agreement for the creation of a joint research facility for the development of cancer therapies.