X-Chem, a privately-held biotechnology company focused on applying its drug discovery capabilities to the generation of novel small molecule therapeutics, has achieved several milestones leading to the licensing of three drug discovery programs by AstraZeneca, in the context of a collaboration the companies established in May 2012.

AstraZeneca elected to license programs directed at an oncology PPI target, a respiratory/inflammation PPI target and an antibacterial target. Financial terms of the licenses were not disclosed.

"Our on-going, two-year, multi-target collaboration with X-Chem is focused on discovering leads to several of AstraZeneca's drug targets using X-Chem's small molecule discovery platform," said Mike Snowden, vice president of discovery sciences, AstraZeneca. "The collaboration has enabled generation of novel chemical series for three of our key therapeutic programs and is an important part of our small molecule discovery strategy."