Syngenta, BioLeap announce crop protection research agreement

BioLeap, Inc., Ewing, NJ, announced that the company has entered into a research collaboration with Syngenta to apply BioLeap molecular design technology to the discovery of Syngenta crop protection products.

Under the agreement, Syngenta Ventures will make an equity investment in BioLeap, and BioLeap will provide molecular designs for the synthesis of compounds aimed at targets of interest in crop protection research. BioLeap's work on these targets will be exclusive to Syngenta.

The agreement builds upon and expands previous research carried out for Syngenta. Financial details of the agreement are not being disclosed.

David Pompliano, chief executive officer of BioLeap, said, "One of our objectives at BioLeap is to further our alliances with companies in the agriculture and consumer products industries even as we maintain our focus on pharmaceuticals as well. We are gratified by Syngenta's confidence in our capabilities, and we look forward to expanding our role in Syngenta's emphasis on world-class science."

The collaboration with Syngenta will take advantage of the proprietary advances that BioLeap chemists have made in creating and using computer simulations both to design compounds de novo, chemical fragment by chemical fragment, and to tailor existing designs. Every BioLeap design builds on calculations of the binding energies between the compound being fashioned in silico and its biological target.

The exactitude of this method, known as computational fragment-based design, seeks to ensure greater affinity for the target than is available through conventional compound screening and to achieve other optimal chemical properties. The method thus promises to reduce costly and time-consuming trial and error, minimizing the number of compounds that need actually to be synthesized and then tested, improving the odds of success in early research, and accelerating overall product development.