Vichem was founded in 1999 by Axxima Pharmacuticals, Axel Ullrich and György Kéri to utilize its predecessor Biosignals technologies for drug discovery in the kinase field, based on the long term collaboration between Axel Ullrich (founder of SUgen and Axxima) and Gyorgy Keri. BioSignal was founded in 1991 as a university spin-off to develop TT232 for signal transduction therapy in cancer (in Clinical Phase II.). BioSignal collaborated with MPI (Axel Ullrich) and became the collaborative partner of SUgen Inc., USA from 1992-1999 (SU101 in Clinical Phase III.).