MEDFORD, Mass.--ArQule, a publicly held computational chemistry company here, announced it will collaborate with privately held Acadia Pharmaceuticals of San Diego, Calif., on the discovery and development of novel drug candidates.
The collaboration will combine ArQule's Mapping Array program with Acadia's high-throughput Receptor Selection and Amplification Technology--an ultra-high-throughput platform for cell-based functional analysis of signaling genes--for screening a number of drug candidates.
ArQule also announced last week the election of Michael Rosenblatt to its board of directors. Rosenblatt is the Ebert Professor of Molecular Medicine at Harvard Medical School and has over 25 years experience in the scientific, academic, industrial, and medical service sectors of healthcare. Rosenblatt was formerly senior vice-president at Merck Research Laboratories.
ArQule also announced it received two patents from the US Patent and Trademark Office. One, entitled "Method of Generating a Plurality of Chemical Compounds in a Spatially Arranged Array" expands the coverage of another US patent of the same title that the company received earlier this year. The second new patent, "Hydroxyethyl Aminimides" builds on another ArQule patent that covers aminimide-containing compounds that are mimetics of peptides and certain other biological molecules.