A new Dundee biotech company has struck a major $4.8 million (£3m) deal with a US pharmaceutical company to produce medicines for psychiatric disorders.
ex scientia Ltd has signed an agreement with Sunovion Pharmaceuticals to produce drugs for sufferers from conditions including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression.
The Dundee company and Sunovion are working towards producing medicines that can go into a clinical environment for trials within the three years of their collaboration agreement.
Sunovion has already given an upfront payment of $1m to ex scientia, which provides molecular designs for new drugs to increase the effectiveness of the expensive drug discovery process.
The company has developed a world-leading approach to automating drug design which it is now applying to a specialised process known as phenotypic drug discovery.
Professor Andrew Hopkins, founder and chief executive of ex scientia, said the agreement with Sunovion is the biggest the company has won in its two-year life.
The company, which has nine employees, has carried out work for other major pharmaceutical companies but the Sunovion agreement is the most significant so far.
“We are very excited about it and it gives us a considerable boost,” he said.
“It creates financial stability and allows us to move forward and develop our company in the market.
“We are delighted to collaborate with Sunovion on this approach to discovering new treatments for complex psychiatric diseases.”
Professor Hopkins said the partnership establishes ex scientia’s design platform for data-driven drug discovery and shows the power of applying its technology to challenging diseases.
Dr Thomas Large, senior vice-president of discovery and pre-clinical research at Massachusetts-based Sunovion, said his company was extremely pleased to form a strategic alliance with ex scientia.
“It will create an innovative approach to tackling complex psychiatric diseases by integrating polypharmacology with behavioural insights from phenotypic data,” he said.
“This partnership underscores Sunovion’s commitment to developing a robust pipeline to treat unmet medical needs in patients.”
Under the agreement, Sunovion will receive exclusive worldwide rights to the resulting compounds and ex scientia will retain exclusive rights to the technology.
Dundee projects itself as the location of one of the UK’s most exciting and dynamic life science clusters. Research benefits from a wealth of experience from around the world, as international academics and leading life science companies work closely together in the city to turn research into commercial enterprise.
Dundee and Abertay universities as well as the James Hutton Institute are heavily involved in life sciences, and Dundee and Angus College offers industrial partners customised training for the life science sector.
Currently 18% of Scotland’s life science companies are based in Dundee, with the area employing more than 4,000 people in the sector.