UCB & Domainex Publishes Cancer Drug Study Information

The firms have developed an experimental system to study the three-dimensional structure of Mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase.

UCB and Domainex Ltd have jointly published the results of a collaboration in the field of cancer drug discovery.

The two firms have developed an experimental system to study the three-dimensional structure of Mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase (MAPKK, also known as MEK), a protein which is over-active in many human cancers. Using the high-resolution structural information, UCB scientists were able to design a novel class of molecules which inhibit MEK and which have the potential to combat cancer.

The key step in this work used Domainex’s Combinatorial Domain Hunting (CDH) technology to identify a form of the MEK protein which can be produced in large quantities and which is suitable for structure-based drug discovery. In the case of MEK, this was cha