CHDI, Amphora Discovery Sign HD Pact

Amphora Discovery and CHDI, Inc. have signed multiple agreements that provide CHDI access to Amphora Discovery’s integrated contract discovery services. CHDI is seeking an approach to rapidly discover and develop drugs that prevent or slow Huntington Disease (HD), an inherited degenerative brain disease for which there is no treatment to delay or prevent its onset.

The agreements cover multiple biological targets implicated in HD and include access to Amphora Discovery’s PrecisionScreen, PrecisionSelect and Full Hit-to-Lead services. Amphora will screen a large number of CHDI compounds against the implicated proteins using its PrecisionScreen technology. The PrecisionScreen data, combined with the parallel screening of the targets, will enable the primary data to be used for direct Structure Activity Relationship (SAR) mining. According to the company, this service avoids lengthy retest times and enables CHDI to rapidly select and prioritize the best chemical series for further development. Amphora Discovery will then use its PrecisionSelect profiling platform to further characterize any compounds of interest. The two companies will initiate a Full Hit-to-Lead program to structurally optimize multiple chemical series against all the implicated targets.

“Amphora Discovery is a highly experienced drug discovery partner with a validated process that delivers high quality data on reduced timelines. CHDI’s mission is to support projects that hold specific potential for discovery and development of practical therapeutics ready for preclinical testing within a three- to five-year timeframe. We believe that Amphora Discovery’s optimized drug discovery process provides us with the ability to achieve this goal,” said Dr. Robert Pacifici, chief scientific adviser to CHDI.