As part of Germany’s Clusters4Future initiative, PROXIDRUGS is funded with €14 M by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research over the next three years. The cluster focuses on developing new treatments for diseases with high unmet medical needs by utilizing the new concept of targeted protein degradation. Proximity-inducing drugs can trigger the degradation of disease-relevant proteins in a highly specific manner by directing them towards the cellular recycling system. That will open up new therapeutic options in a broad spectrum of diseases. It is assumed that 80% of proteins that are so far deemed as undruggable may be targeted by this strategy. 

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PROXIDRUGS aims at improving this novel class of drugs in multiple ways: the strategy comprises the identification of suitable functional subunits for molecule engineering; the directed optimization of pharmacological properties; and the transfer to clinical phases. In line with this, the cluster interlinks partners from academia and industry, covering the entire value chain from basic to translational research. Academic participants are based at Goethe University Frankfurt, TU Darmstadt, University of Heidelberg, the MPI of Biophysics, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Translational Medicine and Pharmacology. They are closely working together with major pharma partners, namely AbbVie Deutschland, Merck Healthcare, and GlaxoSmithKline, as well as Revvity as a technology provider.