Crinetics Enters Collaboration Agreement With Ferring Research Institute

Crinetics Pharmaceuticals, an early stage San Diego biotech developing specialized biosensors for drug discovery applications, says it has signed a collaboration agreement with the Ferring Research Institute, the peptide research center established in San Diego by Ferring Pharmaceuticals.

Last month, when Crinetics got a small business research grant of nearly $238,000, the startup said its technology is focused on developing biosensors that utilize a family of receptor molecules on cell walls called G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). The biotech says it’s own work is focused on studying endocrine GPCRs that can be used in assays for drug molecules, allowing researchers to rule candidate drugs in or out at an earlier stage and thus potentially speeding up pharmaceutical R&D.

In its statement yesterday, Crinetics says it will apply components of its GPCR Dynamics assay platform to a Ferring proprietary drug discovery target. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Stephen Betz, a Crinetics scientist and spokesman, said no further details would be released about Ferring’s drug target or the agreement itself.

“Our strategy is to initially fund through grants and contracts, with the hope of attracting venture funding in this new year,” Betz writes in an email. “We have the first SBIR grant…and have other applications outstanding. The Ferring deal is by no means exclusive (though certainly the content of their project is) and we are also in discussions with other companies and so hope to have other ‘Ferring-type’ deals in the not-too-distant future. We think we can help a lot of people.”

Based in Saint-Prex, Switzerland, Ferring Pharmaceuticals specializes in developing drugs in the areas of urology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, gynecology, and fertility.


Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.