Selvita acquires license for Medicines Discovery Catapult’s patented target engagement technology
Selvita is the first contract research organisation (CRO) to license a Chemical Protein Stability Assay developed and patented by Medicines Discovery Catapult (MDC) to help identify and prioritise drug candidates faster.
MDC’s Chemical Protein Stability Assay (CPSA) is a distinctive technology used to assess target engagement. It can be applied at every step of the drug discovery process to support drug development, screening, and optimisation.
Target engagement is a key step in early-stage drug discovery. By understanding the relationship between drug/target binding and efficacy, innovators can confirm the mechanism of action involved in their therapeutic. This helps accelerate the process of identifying and prioritising drug candidates, improving drug development success.
Selvita, a leading provider of integrated drug discovery and development solutions, is integrating the CPSA into its early discovery screening cascades. This novel technology will enable rapid assessment of drug-target engagement at a scale compatible with hit identification and hit-to-lead screening campaigns.
Unlike traditional target engagement assays that involve multiple processing steps and can introduce variability, MDC’s CPSA offers a streamlined, single-plate format that improves consistency and throughput.
The assay uses cell lysates (broken-down cell membranes), allowing protein screening in a native context without the need for complex purification workflows.
The patented CPSA applies to a range of cellular protein targets and can be configured using different endpoint technologies (to measure the amount of folded protein remaining after denaturation), depending on the throughput required for analysis.
This makes the CPSA highly amenable to both early-stage high-throughput screening and later-stage drug candidate target engagement confirmation.
Dr Francesca Sadler, Chief Commercial Officer at Medicines Discovery Catapult, said:
We welcome Selvita as the first CRO to license our exciting CPSA technology and look forward to working with them to deploy it into their high-throughput workflows and generate decision-making data. The CPSA is the first technology MDC has patented, and we are delighted to provide this additional tool for drug discovery innovators to overcome some of the barriers in early-stage drug discovery. In doing so, MDC is helping to drive productivity and impact, accelerating the path to commercial success and getting more medicines to patients faster.
Dr Paul Overton, Chief Commercial Officer at Selvita, said:
We are really excited by this novel technology and what it can deliver for our customers. This agreement reflects Selvita’s continued focus on expanding our scientific toolkit to better support our partners at the earliest stages of drug discovery. By integrating a robust, scalable target engagement assay into our screening platform, we’re helping customers make confident, data-driven decisions as they advance new therapeutic programs.