Benzinga | Jan 18, 2022 06:47AM EST

Schrdinger Announces Acquisition Of XTAL BioStructures, Inc. For $6M In Cash

Acquisition Expands Schr?dinger's Leadership in Structure-Based Drug Discovery

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Schr?dinger, Inc. (NASDAQ:SDGR), whose physics-based software platform is transforming the way therapeutics and materials are discovered, today announced the acquisition of XTAL BioStructures, Inc., a private company based in the Greater Boston area that provides structural biology services, including biophysical methods, protein production and purification, and X-ray crystallography, to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.

The acquisition of XTAL BioStructures enables Schr?dinger to pursue scientific advancements in the field of structural biology, augment its ability to produce high quality target structures for its drug discovery programs, and expand its offerings to include an advanced and differentiated service that provides customers access to protein structures that have been computationally validated and are ready for structure-based virtual screening and lead optimization.

"The acquisition of XTAL BioStructures enables us to continue to meaningfully advance the field of structure-based drug discovery. Through the integration of experimental and computational approaches, we can continue to improve techniques to prepare proteins for structure-based drug design methods," said Ramy Farid, Ph.D., chief executive officer at Schr?dinger. "Because high quality protein structures are core to our business, we wanted to bring these experimental capabilities in-house. With this acquisition, we will have access to more structures, and will leverage our protein structure refinement methods to scale up production of high-resolution structures, which are starting points for our physics-based computational platform."

"XTAL and Schr?dinger share a strong cultural fit and commitment to science, which was a very important consideration for both organizations," said Robert Suto, Ph.D., chief executive officer at XTAL BioStructures. "We are excited to join forces and look forward to Schr?dinger's investment in our capabilities."

Schr?dinger and XTAL BioStructures closed the $6 million all-cash acquisition on January 14, 2022, and XTAL BioStructures is now operating as part of Schr?dinger. XTAL is headquartered in Natick, Massachusetts with 18 employees, and Schr?dinger will continue to operate XTAL BioStructures' services at the current location.