Axxam and Promega announce agreement to develop smart assays for drug discovery services

Milan (Italy); Madison, WI USA. (May 23, 2023)

Axxam and Promega announced today formalization of an agreement that will offer world-class early-stage drug discovery services for different classes of targets and cellular pathways.

Global clients will have facilitated access to innovative customized luminescence-based, cell-free and cell-based assays suitable to run in miniaturized and fully automated High-Throughput Screening (HTS) format, in search of novel drug candidates.

This agreement combines the expertise of global biotechnology manufacturer Promega in the creation and production of a large spectrum of luminescence-based tools with the strong background and capabilities of Axxam in the generation of cell-free and cell-based assays and HTS. The strategy aims at offering services for target identification/validation as well for hit discovery based on innovative assays able to smartly monitor important cellular processes like protein degradation, protein-protein and protein-nucleotide interactions, protein secretion, RNA splicing and transcription modulation.

These drug discovery platforms and expertise can be accessed, under a single contractual and project management arrangement, by pharmaceutical and biotech companies, as well as academic translational organizations around the world.

“This agreement enables researchers working in new frontiers of drug discovery to access a broad range of robust and reliable assays to enhance their work,” says Tom Livelli, Promega Vice President, Life Sciences Products & Services. “We are excited to team up with Axxam in this endeavor to offer innovative technologies focused on addressing key challenges in early-phase drug discovery.” 

“Axxam has enjoyed a very close collaboration with Promega over many years to develop smart and HTS-compatible assays for very challenging and innovative targets, which are being continuously discovered by the scientific community and explored in the life science industry,” says Stefan Lohmer, Axxam Chief Executive Officer. “For us Promega is the ideal partner to leverage the outstanding scientific expertise in both companies to support and enable the life science industry in their drug discovery efforts.”

Axxam is an innovative Partner Research Organization (iPRO) providing integrated discovery services across the life sciences industries. Axxam is headquartered in the Milan area (Italy), with other research laboratories in Naples (Italy) as well as Constance (Germany) and business offices in Cambridge (USA), Copenhagen (Denmark) and Basel (Switzerland). Within the drug discovery disciplines, Axxam supports pharma and biotech companies, start-ups, patient foundations as well as academic groups in their journey from target assessment and hit identification to lead generation, over all therapeutic areas and target classes. Axxam’s services include assay development, high-throughput screening, hit validation and hit-to-lead. The same science-driven approach is also applied to identify new bioactive compounds for crop protection, animal health, food, beverage, pet food, cosmetic and perfume industries.

Promega Corporation is a leader in providing innovative solutions and technical support to the life sciences industry. The company’s portfolio of over 4,000 products supports a range of life science work across areas such as cell biology; DNA, RNA and protein analysis; drug development; human identification and molecular diagnostics. For over 40 years these tools and technologies have grown in their application and are used today by scientists and technicians in labs for academic and government research, forensics, pharmaceuticals, clinical diagnostics and agricultural and environmental testing. Promega is headquartered in Madison, WI, USA with branches in 16 countries and over 50 global distributors.