Envoy expands drug discovery collaboration with The Scripps Research Institute

Envoy Therapeutics, Inc., a recently-formed drug discovery company, today announced that it has expanded its research collaboration with The Scripps Research Institute aimed at identifying new drugs for neurological and psychiatric diseases. Augmenting the collaboration Envoy and Scripps commenced in July focused on improved treatments for Parkinson's disease, scientists at the two organizations will carry out three additional drug discovery programs over the coming year. These programs will employ Scripps-Florida's high-throughput screening capabilities to discover compounds that modulate target proteins identified by Envoy.

“We continue to be very pleased with the close interactions between our scientific teams”

Using its proprietary bacTRAP^® technology, Envoy's scientists have identified proteins that are expressed in specific cell types that are affected in brain-related diseases. They believe that modulating these proteins with small molecule drugs may achieve greater efficacy with fewer side-effects than existing treatments. With funding provided by Envoy, Scripps-Florida's scientists will employ the institute's robotic screening systems, diverse chemical libraries and comprehensive data analysis to identify candidate compounds for optimization by Envoy.

"We continue to be very pleased with the close interactions between our scientific teams," said Brad Margus, Chief Executive Officer at Envoy. "Scripps' talented chemists and state-of-the-art infrastructure enable our company to make rapid progress toward the discovery of new drugs."

"The speed with which Envoy has expanded its relationship with our Florida based discovery team is strong validation of the world class scientific capabilities of our organization," added Richard Lerner, Ph.D., President of The Scripps Research Institute. "We look forward to partnering with Envoy in racing towards more effective treatments for Parkinson's and other central nervous system diseases for which there is enormous unmet medical need."