The €1m research funding from the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) will be used to broaden the range of interactions that can be studied by the company's KinaTor technology.
The KinaTor technology combines affinity-based separation procedures using immobilised kinase inhibitors with sensitive mass spectrometry (MS) techniques to detect the cellular targets of a given kinase inhibitor in mammalian tissue and cell line samples.
Kinaxo has been using the technology to aid various pharmaceutical collaborators, such as Johnson & Johnson and UCB Pharma, in their drug development programs.
Supported Dr Lothar Jansch of the Helmholtz Institute in Braunschweig, Germany and Dr Henrik Daub of the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsreid, Germany the technology will be expanded to allow the detection of interactions between any drug candidate that can be immobilised and its cellular targets.
The technique works by covalently linking a kinase inhibitor or drug candidate to an affinity matrix ensuring the 'active site' of the molecule is still accessible to any proteins it comes in contact with.
Any proteins that bind to the immobilised drug candidate can then be identified using MS techniques to reveal the whole spectrum of possible protein interactions from the 'compounds perspective'.
"Combining quantitative mass spectrometry with the KinaTor technology significantly strengthens our chemical proteomics capabilities. With this new set-up we can immediately distinguish relevant drug-protein interactions from weak binding as well as determine a compound's affinity without the need of in vitro assays," said Klaus Godl, head of research at Kinaxo.
This allows researchers to identify toxic off-target effects of potential drugs at an early stage in the development process contributing to higher success rates in clinical trials and minimising the chances of a costly late stage drug failure.
"Having a proven track record as a kinase specialist we will now start to analyse the target profiles of other inhibitor classes such as protease and phosphatase inhibitors as well as drugs that failed in the clinic due to off-target effects," said Godl.
