Kinaxo Enters into an Agreement with Boehringer Ingelheim

10-15-2008: Kinaxo Biotechnologies GmbH announced that it has entered into a two-year collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim. Under the agreement Kinaxo will apply its new platform technologies to studies on drug mode of action and target identification. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

Building on its existing quantitative Cellular Target ProfilingTM capabilities, Kinaxo will now employ high end mass spectrometry-based technologies to quantitatively analyze post-translational modifications of proteins. This new service will make it possible to determine the effects of compounds on proteome-wide signal transduction pathways, providing a detailed and comprehensive picture of their in vivo mode of action in cultured cells or animal tissue. Such analyses will also facilitate identifying new biomarkers and drug targets.

In the initial phase of this collaboration Kinaxo will undertake two studies on behalf of Boehringer Ingelheim. The first will be a cell line analysis project to measure the effects of an enzyme inhibitor on the acetylation status of the cellular proteome. In the second study, Kinaxo will use its new phosphoproteomics platform to determine differences in the signal transduction pathway activation status of a specific neuronal tissue when comparing wild type with a genetically modified mouse strain modelling a defined disease state. The aim of this study is to identify new drug targets.