Checking out new books from the library

Exelixis Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s genomics-based discovery efforts historically have been focused on kinases. With the planned acquisition of X-Ceptor Therapeutics Inc., EXEL is branching out into nuclear hormone receptors. The company thinks it will be able to make the jump because its existing compound library has been shown to contain hits against NHRs.

EXEL has been using its library of about 4 million compounds to develop small molecules against kinase targets. These efforts have been productive, as EXEL (South San Francisco, Calif.) has three compounds in the clinic and hopes to file about two INDs per year going forward. ...