Licence terms for rights to certain cyprolides agreed upon

Licence terms for the exclusive development and commercialisation rights to certain macrocyclic inhibitors of peptide bond isomerases (cyprolides) have been agreed upon by Cypralis and Gilead Sciences.

This represents a further step in collaboration between the companies, following a multi-year drug discovery collaboration between Selcia and Gilead under which Selcia’s chemists and biologists provided integrated drug discovery services to support Gilead’s liver disease research programmes. This research collaboration generated four jointly owned patents and two pre-clinical candidates The research phase ended in 2013 and Selcia’s rights under the agreement have been subsequently transferred to Cypralis.

“Cyprolides are a new class of fully synthetic cyclophilin inhibitors that are potent inhibitors of cyclophilin D and protect against opening of the mitochondrial permeability transition pore. This property leads to protection of cells and tissues associated with several diseases such as neurodegeneration, fibrosis and other mitochondrially-mediated diseases,” commented Simon Kerr, CEO, Cypralis. “By focusing upon acute and chronic degenerative diseases, we aim to exploit the properties of this new class of compound in areas outside of oncology and virology.”

Cypralis is a company, spun out from Selcia, focused on the discovery and development of novel medicines for acute and chronic degenerative diseases.