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Shares jump at Tyneside drug discovery firm e-therapeutics as Belgian tie-up brings success

The Newcastle University spin-out has received two payments from an agreement with Galapagos

Ali Mortazavi, Executive Chairman of e-therapeutics(Image: e-therapeutics)

Shares in Tyneside drug discovery firm e-therapeutics jumped in early trading after it announced it has received two payments from a Belgian biotech firm.

Last June the company, a Newcastle University spin-out with bases in Newcastle and Oxford, highlighted a collaboration agreement with leading biotechnology company Galapagos, which is based in Mechelen, Belgium, as a demonstration of the growth potential for the business.

Now the firm has announced it has met two key milestones as part of the agreement with Galapagos, which specialises in the discovery and development of small molecule medicines with novel modes of action, focussing on inflammation, fibrosis and kidney disease.

It said that, despite the global pandemic, the collaboration has remained on schedule. Shares rose 6.14% to 20.91p in early trading.

E-therapeutics’ main disease-agnostic platform offers a solution to critical challenges in drug discovery, and uses its platform to identify active compounds - and using the Network-driven Drug Discovery platform - NDD - and know-how, e-therapeutics has successfully identified compounds of interest to Galapagos.

Further work will now take place and, under the terms of the agreement with Galapagos, e-therapeutics is eligible to receive additional milestone payments through pre-clinical and clinical development as well as commercial milestones.

Ali Mortazavi, chief executive officer of e-therapeutics, said: “E-therapeutics’ ability to model human disease processes effectively in silico addresses critical limitations of the drug discovery process.

“Our deeper understanding of underlying disease biology and ability to test millions of possible therapeutic interventions computationally ahead of experimental validation have the potential to mitigate late-stage, costly failures in drug development.