Astex Aims To Make Cancer Drug Resistance Futile

“Using our drugs, we’re trying to facilitate the old drugs or help them work better longer,” Astex’s Lyons said. Astex, AstraZeneca and Novartis all presented data on compounds from Astex’s fragment-based drug discovery platform at the recent American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Washington, D.C.

Astex Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s Pyramid fragment-based discovery platform turns out small-molecule drug candidates with a variety of mechanisms of action, but the program is not so much about inventing new drugs as it is inventing drugs that can be used to amplify the effects of existing drugs or resensitize cancers to their effects.

“That’s what we’re trying to do,” John Lyons, Astex head of translational research, said in an interview on the sidelines of the AACR meeting. “Using our drugs, we’re trying to...

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