NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute said today that its investigators will collaborate with Pfizer to identify therapeutic targets for use in preventing and treating complications related to obesity and diabetes.
Under the three-year collaboration, the partners at Pfizer and Sanford-Burnham's Conrad Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics will use novel screening tools and systems biology approaches to develop treatment methods for reducing insulin resistance.
The partners will harness Sanford-Burnham's expertise in disease biology and muscle metabolism and Pfizer' drug discovery know-how to screen for relevant targets from Pfizer and evaluate previously identified compounds from the National Institutes of Health's chemical library. Once they have found compounds of interest, the partners will conduct further studies to understand how they function, and then will use them as probes to identify novel diabetes treatments.
The Prebys Center houses a screening facility that includes ultra-high-throughput screening, high-content screening, phenotypic screening, and target deconvolution tools.
Terms of the alliance were not disclosed.