Ligon Discovery, Lycera announce collaboration to identify drug candidates for immune disorders

Ligon Discovery announced today that it has entered into a collaboration agreement with Lycera Corporation to apply its Small Molecule Microarray (SMM) screening technology to identify first-in-class drug candidates for immune disorders. Ligon will apply its SMM technology to screen protein targets identified by Lycera as critical to the development of certain immune disorders. Financial terms were not disclosed.

"By partnering with Lycera, a leader in the discovery of novel therapeutics for immune disorders, we can demonstrate the unique capabilities of SMMs, in particular, to screen challenging targets to identify unique starting points for novel drug discovery," Dr. Patrick Kleyn, Chief Executive Officer of Ligon Discovery explained.

"Ligon's Small Molecule Microarray technology allows us to rapidly screen any protein target irrespective of its biological function, against Ligon's and our compound collection," said Dr. Gary Glick, Lycera's founder and Chief Scientific Officer.