Amgen, Sanofi, Ono link with academia on proteins project

LONDON, Oct 28 (Reuters) - U.S.-based Amgen (Xetra: 867900 - news) , France's Sanofi (NasdaqGM: GCVRZ - news) and Ono Pharmaceutical of Japan have linked with three research institutes to study a super-family of proteins controlling everything from taste to the spread of cancer.

The decision by the three drugmakers to join forces with academia to generate high-resolution pictures of hundreds of proteins known as G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) is part of a growing trend to pool early-stage drug research.

GPCRs, which are implicated in many disease processes, are a hot topic of research and scientists working in the field were awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry two years ago.

GPCRs serve as a main conduit for chemicals to get past a cell's membrane. They are already highly valued as targets for drug interventions but mechanistically they are poorly understood.

Better information about their structure could help in the hunt for new drug candidates, the partners in the new GPCR Consortium believe.

The three collaborating academic research institutes are the iHuman Institute at ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica and the University of Southern California. (Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by David Holmes)