This venture is the first major application of Cresset’s molecular field technology in the agrochemical arena

Cresset BioMolecular Discovery Ltd (Cresset BMD), a drug discovery technology company, and Bayer CropScience, a global market and innovation leader in the agrochemicals industry, have announced today that they have entered into a collaboration to exploit Cresset’s molecular field technology for the discovery of new agrochemicals. This venture is the first major application of Cresset’s molecular field technology in the agrochemical arena. Bayer CropScience will apply Cresset’s FieldScreen™ software to identify novel early stage active compounds to progress through their development pipeline.

Andy Vinter, Cresset’s CSO, commented: “We are delighted to be working with Bayer CropScience, to apply and develop our FieldScreen™ software and related technology to identify new chemotypes for the crop science industry. Bayer CropScience has an exceptionally experienced and innovative computational chemistry group and we are confident that this collaboration will result in pioneering advances in crop science research.”

Michael Schindler, Senior Scientist at Bayer CropScience, states: "Cresset's FieldScreen technique is complementary to our existing software tools in computational chemistry and we feel confident that this approach provides another step towards further improving our early phase research activities."

FieldScreen™ is based on Cresset’s revolutionary method of modelling compounds in terms of their molecular fields rather than their atom and bond representations which chemists are accustomed to using. If two structurally different compounds bind to the same region of a protein, their ‘outer skins' or Fields must be similar despite their structural differences. Cresset has developed technology to create and visualise accurate fields around a molecule which can be used to model binding interactions. The Field technology has been validated by several major pharmaceutical companies for virtual screening over the past year.

Cresset BioMolecular Discovery Ltd. is a drug discovery technology company based in Letchworth, Hertfordshire, UK. Founded in November 2001, the Company has pioneered the use of in silico applications for the analysis of molecular fields rather than chemical structures in drug discovery. The Company markets its proprietary Field-based software which includes Fieldscreen™, a virtual screening technology that rapidly identifies diverse compounds with the same biological effects as known actives, and FieldTemplater™ which creates bound conformation hypotheses for active compounds to guide hit-finding and lead optimisation projects. Cresset also undertakes fee-for-service projects and collaborations with shared IP. It has a global client base which includes six major pharmaceutical companies and more than twenty biotechnology companies.

Bayer CropScience, a subsidiary of Bayer AG with annual sales of about EUR 6 billion, is one of the world’s leading innovative crop science companies in the areas of crop protection, non-agricultural pest control, seeds and plant biotechnology. The company offers an outstanding range of products and extensive service backup for modern, sustainable agriculture and for non-agricultural applications. Bayer CropScience has a global workforce of about 19,000 and is represented in more than 120 countries.