Focus pays off for Serenex

By acquiring Serenex Inc. for an undisclosed sum, Pfizer Inc. gets one of only two oral heat shock protein 90 inhibitors in the clinic for cancer. As a bonus, the pharma company also gets Serenex's matrix technology that identifies proteins in the purine-binding proteome, and a library of about 5,000 purine-binding proteins, including Hsp90s.

Hsp90 is a molecular chaperone that regulates the folding and degradation of proteins involved in cell growth and survival. These signaling proteins play key roles in cancer, inflammation and neurodegenerative diseases...