Endo has entered a deal with the India-based contract research organisation (CRO) GVK Biosciences to develop small molecules targeting an unnamed protein.
As part of the deal, financial details of which remain undisclosed, GVK Biosciences will deliver a clinical candidate for Endo to then develop and commercialise.
The collaboration is the first to come from what GVK Biosciences calls its Early Discovery Assets (EDA) programme, which is seeing the company develop a portfolio of discovery project assets for potential early stage partnering.
A specific indication for the Endo collaboration was not given, although the EDA portfolio is focused around pain and inflammation, which is in line with Endo’s specialities of pain, urology/oncology and endocrinology.
According to GVK, the EDA programme involves the CRO developing these assets to a stage where they can demonstrate value as a treatment, before looking for partnership opportunities to continue development.
Manni Kantipudi, CEO of GVK Biosciences, said: “We are delighted to partner with Endo as it continues to build its discovery pipeline through external collaborations.
“This collaboration also confirms the value of our differentiated EDA concept, conceived to collaborate with pharmaceutical partners on discovery projects, from target to clinical candidates.”
The collaboration with Endo comes in the same month that GVK Biosciences entered a deal with another US-based pharma company.
In early January, it agreed to partner with Onconova Therapuetics to develop two of Onconova’s discovery targets in cancer using GVK’s discovery platform.
The CRO also has an arrangement with Astellas Pharma to provide the Japan-based pharma company with access to its ‘structure activity relationship’ (SAR) database, which includes data for more than 5.1 million compounds.