John Wiley & Sons, Inc., a global provider of knowledge and knowledge-enabled solutions that improve outcomes in research, professional practice, and education, announced today that it has acquired SimBioSys Inc., a provider of scientific software tools that facilitate the drug discovery process. Terms were not disclosed.

Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) and Daiichi Sankyo Co., Ltd. (Daiichi Sankyo) today announced they have entered into a three-year comprehensive alliance to develop first-in-class therapeutics for the treatment of cardiovascular-metabolic diseases. The collaboration is built on an open-innovation model to bridge the gap between target discovery and pre-clinical drug development.

Microbes are not only a rich source of disease, but also a rich source of medicines, and experts think many life-saving compounds produced by as-yet-unnamed bacteria are awaiting discovery. But they don’t always give up their secrets easily. Researchers must know where to look to find promising bacteria, and how to get them to grow in the lab, the traditional route to identifying potentially valuable molecules they produce.

Compounds can be 70 times more potent than Tenofovir, a first-line HIV regimen

NYU Langone Medical Center has established a new drug discovery accelerator, the Office of Therapeutics Alliances (OTA). OTA is an innovative, nimble program that advances the discovery of novel therapeutic projects by combining the scientific strengths of NYU Langone investigators in dissecting disease pathways with the expertise of external professional drug discovery and development partners in the biopharma industry.

Anasys Instruments Corp. has licensed a Department of Energy Oak Ridge National Laboratory technology that allows for simultaneous chemical and physical characterization and could lead to advances in materials and drug development.

Johnson & Johnson Innovation is first collaborator.

As some countries and companies roll out new rules to limit animal testing in pharmaceutical products designed for people, scientists are stepping in with a new way to test therapeutic drug candidates and determine drug safety and drug interactions — without using animals. The development of “chemosynthetic livers,” which could dramatically alter how drugs are made, was presented at the 247^th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society.

Chemists devise a new way to manufacture peptide drugs, which hold promise for treating many diseases.