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First meeting of the researchers involved in the Genius Pharma project

By 12 de July de 2006November 18th, 2020No Comments
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 12.07.2006

First meeting of the researchers involved in the Genius Pharma project

Tuesday 11 July marked the first meeting of the research teams that form part of the consortium that develops the Genius Pharma project. Entitled "Development, consolidation and exploitation of technology platforms and good practices in innovative drug discovery" and held in Barcelona, the meeting involved representatives from several organizations, including the biotech enterprises Enantia and CrystaX Pharmaceutical, and the PCB's Combinatorial Chemistry Platform.

In this meeting, the new platforms developed in this project, involving organizations from both the public and private sectors, were presented. Among these, the platform devoted to the synthesis of chemical libraries through combinatorial chemistry techniques, presented by the manager of the Combinatorial Chemistry Platform of the PCB, Míriam Royo, and the director of the Chemical Research Institute of Catalonia, Miquel Pericàs; the target crystallization platform, presented by the CrystaX researcher, Montse Soler; and the enantiomerically pure drug platform, by researcher Joan Feixas, at Enantia.

The Genuis Pharma project will also develop platforms for the following: identification and prioritisation of therapeutic targets; development of in vitro methods using robotics and computational screening methods in silico; fragment screening for therapeutic targets; in addition to platforms for the development of pharmacological expertise in vivo and in the synthesis of “building blocks”.

Subsidized through the CENIT programme of the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce, Genius Pharma will promote these technologies for the discovery of new drugs with uses in the fields of inflammation, metabolic syndrome, autoimmune disease, organ transplants or analgesia. This project, which has a budget of 37 million euros, is headed by the pharmaceutical companies Almirall, Esteve, Uriach, the biotech enterprises CrystaX Pharmaceuticals and Enantia, and the chemical company Galchimia.

In addition to the PCB and Universitat de Barcelona, the project also involves public research centres such as the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute, Genoma España, the Municipal Institute for Medical Research of Barcelona, and the universities of Granada, Valencia, and Santiago de Compostela, and the Pompeu Fabra University, among others.