AstraZeneca has partnered with Australian biotech Alchemia to discover and develop novel small molecule drug candidates against multiple AstraZeneca targets utilising Alchemia’s VAST™ (Versatile Assembly on Stable Templates) chemistry platform. The technology is based on the DSA (Diversity Scanning Array), a systematically diverse library of more than 14,000 unique compounds related by shape and/or peptidomimetic functionality. The deal is AstraZeneca’s third in the space of a week and follows cancer R&D collaborations with BIND Therapeutics and Horizon Discovery.