Graffinity Pharmaceuticals has entered into a research collaboration with the Japanese pharmaceutical company Shionogi. As part of the agreement, Graffinity will receive technology access fees and payments for follow-up chemistry for the generation of various, new small molecule developments against a key drug target.

Mathias Woker, chief business officer of Graffinity, remarked, "We are pleased that Shionogi has chosen to collaborate with us to apply our fragment based screening platform to one of Shionogi's high priority discovery programs. This marks our first collaboration with a leading Japanese pharmaceutical company. Our proprietary assay/label-free SPR primary screen of 24,000 fragments and 87,000 lead-like molecules is often crucial in addressing drug targets that are difficult to screen with other technologies."