Kindred Spirits in Small Molecule Drug Discovery

If large molecule therapeutics have largely been the province of biotech companies, Big Pharma has owned the small molecule side of drug discovery. But a number of companies formed in the last couple of years figure they can speed up the process of small molecule discovery by integrating expertise and existing technologies in novel ways. Large companies, they contend, have siloed the requisite expertise in different, quasi-independent departments, slowing up the R&D process.

The start-ups are pursuing different strategies. Sunesis Pharmaceuticals Inc. , for example, is honing in on a set of intractable targets that involve protein-protein interactions. Advanced Medicine Inc. aims to improve the binding of existing drugs with a multivalent approach, and two companies, Triad Therapeutics Inc. and Kinetix Pharmaceuticals Inc. (acquired by Amgen Inc