12 September 2002

F2G and InterBioscreen collaborate on antifungal drug discovery

F2G Ltd, a leading antifungal drug discovery company specialising in the development of new treatments for systemic fungal infection and InterBioscreen (IBS), one of the world's major suppliers of screening compounds, announce the signing of a collaboration to find new systemic anti-fungal drugs.

This relationship was facilitated by Early Discovery Chemistry (EDC) in the UK, InterBioscreen's European Sales Agent. The deal structure and commercial terms were not disclosed.

The collaboration allows F2G to screen for antifungal activity against its HTS and whole cell assays and to further develop promising leads. IBS will provide access to their library of drug-like natural product and synthetic compounds. There is potential to further collaborate on developing specific areas of interest.

Alex Lemon, Business Development Manager at F2G said, "This alliance with IBS represents an important relationship for F2G and allows for a broader collaboration in time. This relationship will provide a strong base from which we hope to explore new areas of chemistry to treat systemic fungal infections "

Steve Iles-Jonas of EDC said, "The collaboration that we set up presents a good opportunity to maximise the number of hits F2G find in the antifungal area and to share the costs and benefits of the project. It also demonstrates their faith in the quality and diversity of the IBS compounds that EDC markets, and will provide them with the chemistry support to develop hit compounds further".

F2G (www.f2g.com) are a leading antifungal drug discovery company with a genomics based platform technology that identifies and validates essential gene targets within Aspergillus fumigatus. F2G also has established broad-based whole cell screening capabilities, animal models, medicinal chemistry and development expertise. F2G plan to use these targets and whole cell screens to discover broad-spectrum antifungal agents. F2G were formed in 1998 and are based in Manchester, United Kingdom.

IBS (www.ibscreen.com) are a major producer and supplier of drug-like screening compounds and building blocks for drug discovery. The IBS has a collection of >320,000 synthetic and natural screening compounds, along with >2,000 building blocks for combinatorial chemistry. IBS was founded in 1989 and are based in Moscow, Russia.

EDC (sgij@edchem.com) are IBS's Sales Agent responsible for marketing and selling their compounds throughout Europe. EDC was founded in 2000 and is based in Hove, United Kingdom.

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