CeMM, the Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, announces the start of a three-year research collaboration with Pfizer Inc. to explore a combination of technologies aimed at expanding the druggable proteome. CeMM Principal Investigators Georg Winter (project coordinator), Giulio Superti-Furga and Stefan Kubicek, in collaboration with researchers from Pfizer’s Medicine Design organization based in Cambridge, USA, will aim to explore a discovery strategy that combines parallel, efficient ligand identification with focused degradation of individual targets.

Chemical proteomics approaches have traditionally been pursued at CeMM in the laboratories of Giulio Superti-Furga and Stefan Kubicek and led to a series of high-impact publications over the last decade. Project coordinator Georg Winter joined CeMM after postdoctoral research with Jay Bradner at the Dana Farber Cancer Center in Boston focusing in the field of Protein Degradation. Therefore, significant know-how, experimental and analytical pipelines are available at CeMM, including a proteomics facility with state of the art instrumentation and trained personnel. In close collaboration with the Pfizer team that brings a strong background in medicinal chemistry and chemical biology, the main aim of this partnership is to scout new corners of the “ligandable” proteome followed by pharmacologic control over selected cellular proteins, including some hitherto deemed as poorly druggable.

“Through this collaboration with CeMM, we have the potential to further build our capabilities in chemical biology and medicinal chemistry and open up areas of target space that have historically been challenging,” said Charlotte Allerton, Senior Vice President and Head of Medicine Design, Pfizer.

“This collaboration will allow us to apply some of the most powerful contemporary technologies in chemical biology at a scale beyond most academic research. Together with Pfizer, we hope to inspire future drug discovery efforts,” said Georg Winter, CeMM Principal Investigator and project coordinator.

The mission of CeMM, the Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy is to achieve maximum scientific innovation in molecular medicine to improve healthcare. At CeMM, an international and creative team of scientists and medical doctors pursues free-minded basic life science research in a large and vibrant hospital environment of outstanding medical tradition and practice. CeMM’s research is based on post-genomic technologies and focuses on societally important diseases, such as immune disorders and infections, cancer and metabolic disorders. CeMM operates in a unique mode of super-cooperation, connecting biology with medicine, experiments with computation, discovery with translation, and science with society and the arts. The goal of CeMM is to pioneer the science that nurtures the precise, personalized, predictive and preventive medicine of the future. CeMM trains a modern blend of biomedical scientists and is located at the campus of the General Hospital and the Medical University of Vienna. www.cemm.oeaw.ac.at