Almirall and the Barcelona Science Park (PCB) have signed a new collaborative agreement that renews and extends until 2009 the previous agreement reached by the two parties back in 2002, that which led to the setting up of the Almirall-PCB Mixed Research Unit. The renewed agreement will provide funding of around two million euro and will promote a line of research being conducted as part of the Genius Pharma project, which receives funding via the CENIT programme of the Spanish government's Ingenio 2010 plan, managed by the Ministry for Industry, Tourism and Trade.

The Almirall-PCB Mixed Research Unit follows two main lines of activity: on the one hand, there is the preparation of families of compounds that fulfil the requirements of originality and patentability, while on the other, and in close collaboration with the Department of Medical Chemistry from Almirall’s R+D area, the Unit seeks to identify new drugs for treating respiratory diseases such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

The researcher in charge of the project is the Director of the Barcelona Science Park, Fernando Albericio, who says that “it is a pleasure to work collaboratively with companies such as Almirall who are committed to R+D. What’s more, the extension of this contract, after four years of joint work, shows that collaboration between the business and academic worlds is a valid way of facing the new challenges of knowledge- and technology-based research”.

According to Per-Olof Andersson, Almirall’s Executive Director for R+D, “this agreement is an example of public-private collaboration as well as of the transfer of knowledge and technology in both directions, and it also illustrates Almirall’s long-term commitment to the academic world, in this case via the Barcelona Science Park”.

The CENIT project, of which the research carried out by the Almirall-PCB Mixed Research Unit forms a part, is promoting various technologies in the search for new drugs in the fields of inflammation, metabolic syndrome, autoimmune diseases, organ transplants and analgesia.