News

CeMM congratulates its spin-off Proxygen on its new collaboration and license agreement with Boehringer Ingelheim. Their new partnership announced today will enable the identification of molecular glue degraders in the aim of degrading cancer drivers that were previously considered undruggable. The collaboration combines Proxygen’s unique molecular glue degrader discovery platform and its expertise in targeted protein degradation with Boehringer Ingelheim’s long-term strategy to provide first-in-class, breakthrough therapies for cancer patients. Molecular glue degraders and PROTACs harness the power of the cell’s recycling machinery to selectively eliminate disease-causing proteins. Molecular glue degraders achieve this by specifically bridging the distance between target proteins and ubiquitin ligases, which consequently flag the target proteins for rapid degradation. Molecular glues orchestrate this protein-protein proximity through highly cooperative binding. They circumvent the need for a defined binding pocket on the surface of the target protein, a requirement for conventional small molecule drugs, allowing pharmaceutical intervention on proteins that were previously considered undruggable. This successful partnership will create a new avenue towards an improved identification of molecular glue degraders candidates, and, hence, the development of future therapies to treat cancer effectively. Read the full press release here.