Selcia and ExonHit Therapeutics announce successful fragment screening collaboration

Selcia Ltd today announced the successful completion of a drug discovery project with ExonHit Therapeutics SA (Paris, France), using Selcia’s fragment screening technology.

Novel and weak affinity hits were identified from Selcia’s Fragment Library, using their proprietary CEfrag™ technique. ExonHit Therapeutics are now advancing the viable hits for optimisation.

Selcia’s Managing Director, Dr Hans Fliri, commented, “This further validates CEfrag’s ability to identify fragments as viable hits at the outset of a drug discovery project against difficult biological targets. Selcia’s CEfrag™ technology uses capillary electrophoresis to detect weak binding interactions between a fragment and target protein. We believe CEfrag™, combined with Selcia’s Fragment Library with high QC criteria, represents a powerful new platform for the identification of new chemical starting points for lead development”.

Dr Eric Beausoleil, Director Medicinal Chemistry at ExonHit Therapeutics said, “Selcia’s scientists were able to successfully identify novel, weak affinity hits from Selcia’s fragment library using their CEfrag™ screening technology. This impressive visual technique allowed the selective detection of direct binding interactions to different forms of our target protein. The new fragment hits were confirmed in our secondary assays, and are now undergoing further evaluation. We look forward to working with Selcia in the future as ExonHit Therapeutics continues its quest for innovative medicines”.

About Selcia
Selcia Ltd is a privately held company providing both carbon-14 (C-14) radiolabelling and integrated drug discovery services, operating from a modern facility in Ongar, Essex, UK.

Selcia Discovery provides integrated drug discovery services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries: these services include assay development and screening
(including fragment screening), medicinal chemistry, eADME and in vivo PK evaluation. Selcia’s scientists act as integrated project teams within the customer group striving to produce robust drug candidates against its partners’ biological targets. Selcia’s expertise in capillary electrophoresis (CE) offers clients the benefits of a versatile and proven technology applied to drug discovery screening on a wide variety of targets. Its proprietary fragment screening service, CEfrag™ Screen, is a powerful application of the technique at the outset of a drug discovery programme.

Selcia’s radiolabelling division produces C-14 radiolabelled compounds for a global customer base encompassing both the life sciences and chemical industries. Applications of the radiolabelled products prepared by Selcia include: preclinical and clinical drug metabolism studies; mass balance, microdosing, research and regulatory studies of cosmetic products; and environmental fate studies of agricultural and industrial chemicals.

About ExonHit Therapeutics
ExonHit Therapeutics (Alternext: ALEHT) is a fast emerging healthcare player active in both therapeutics and diagnostics. The Company is applying its proprietary technology, based on the analysis of alternative RNA splicing, to develop innovative molecular diagnostic tests and therapeutics for Alzheimer’s disease and cancer indications. ExonHit is headquartered in Paris, France and has U.S. offices in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The Company is listed on Alternext of NYSE Euronext Paris. For more information, please visit www.exonhit.com.

ExonHit Disclaimer
ExonHit Therapeutics, its shareholders, and its affiliates, directors, officers, advisors and employees have not verified the accuracy of, and make no representations or warranties in relation to, statistical data or predictions contained in this press release that were taken or derived from third party sources or industry publications, and such statistical data and predictions are used in this press release for information purposes only.

Key contacts for Selcia:

Media Contact
Oliver Woodman-Smith
Tel +44 (0)117 9739224
Email oliver@syndicut.com

Business development contact
Dave Roberts
Tel +44 (0)1277 367000
Email contact@selcia.com

Key contact for ExonHit Therapeutics:

Business development contact
Media & Investors contact
Corinne Hoff
Tel +33 1 58 05 47 04
Email corinne.hoff@exonhit.com