Transcending crystallography

One company's downsizing is another's opportunity to move downstream. Syrrx Inc. last week added Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s small molecule discovery program to its core high throughput crystallography technology as it aims to begin pushing out drug candidates sometime after next year.

With ONXX scaling back to stretch its money over a fewer set of programs (see Ebb & Flow, BioCentury, Nov. 5), Syrrx was able to acquire drug targets and related reagents and assays, compound libraries, and licenses to certain technologies. The deal gives Syrrx what CEO Wendell Wierenga calls "secondary screening capabilities," such as cellular assays for specific diseases and targets, nearly all of which he said are related to some cell signaling pathway...