Astex's Pyramid Scheme

01 Jun 2003

• By Chris Morrison

Astex's latest deal with Schering further distances the firm from infrastructure-heavy structural biology players. Astex hopes that by applying its fragment-based approach to solving key discovery problems among a handful of much sought-after targets-rather than solving many target structures or offering its capability on a service basis-it can sign higher value deals and prevent itself from becoming a victim of the field's commoditization.

Astex Therapeutics Ltd.'s recent flurry of dealmaking "suggests a recognition by the pharmaceutical industry that high throughput screening has not been successful," observes Astex's chief executive Tim Haines, rather than some soaring demand for the specific tools that allow his firm and others within the structural biology space to reveal the nooks and crannies of active sites on the surface of protein targets. (See "Selling Structure," Start-Up, March 2001 Also see "Selling Structure" - Scrip, 1 March, 2001..)

Schering AG , the UK firm's most recent partner, "was looking through all the available technologies to help them...