The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and FORMA Therapeutics Enter Collaboration to Bring New Therapies to Patie...( WHITE PLAINS N.Y. and CAM...),Health

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. and CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 20 /PRNewswire/ -- The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) and FORMA Therapeutics today announced a partnership to accelerate LLS's pipeline of research projects entering late pre-clinical development.

The collaboration will begin with a selection of ten small molecule candidates, discovered by LLS grant-funded academic researchers, deemed to have the most promise of advancing into clinical trials in the shortest period of time. FORMA will use its proprietary Computational Solvent (CS) Mapping technology to aid in structure based drug design with expert computer modeling, screening and medicinal chemistry competence to optimize and prioritize molecules that LLS and its partners may take to the clinic.

The partnership between LLS and FORMA is the latest in LLS's Therapy Acceleration Program (TAP), a bold initiative intended to advance therapies with high prospects of providing near-term benefit to patients suffering from blood cancers. Through TAP, LLS is taking a results-oriented approach, partnering directly with biotechnology companies to move promising therapies more quickly along the FDA drug approval critical path.

"With its sophisticated technology suite and internal expertise to expeditiously progress the development of novel therapies, FORMA is an ideal partner to help LLS identify and optimize the most promising drug candidates and to achieve our mission of advancing life-saving blood cancer therapeutics," said John Walter LLS's chief executive officer.

"LLS has assembled a promising portfolio of innovative programs to combat a wide range of hematological cancers," says FORMA CEO Steve Tregay, Ph.D. "The team at FORMA is excited to be working with LLS on this bold initiative by providing our unique suite of drug discovery technologies to quickly translate science from the laboratory to pat
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