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25/05/2020 - Press release

Alliance between the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute and Chemotargets to accelerate the design of new cancer therapies

This public-private partnership will establish a framework for collaboration that promotes the creation of synergies between both institutions

The company Chemotargets -based in the Barcelona Science Park and a global leader in the development of computational platforms for the design, optimization and safety evaluation of drugs- has signed a strategic agreement with the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) in order to accelerate research projects for the discovery and development of new oncological therapies that respond to important unmet medical needs.

This public-private partnership will establish a framework for collaboration that promotes the creation of synergies between the IMIM experience in the identification of new therapeutic targets in emerging fields of cancer biology and the Chemotargets expertise in drug discovery and development. This initiative will include the use of cutting-edge computational technologies developed specifically to rapidly design drug candidates acting on new mechanisms of action or directed to targets that are difficult to address and for which no identified drugs currently exist.

The IMIM Cancer Research Program develops pioneering research in areas such as cancer biology, understanding new mechanisms of tumor progression and evaluating new therapies such as immunotherapy, or detecting markers of response to treatment. oncological. This program contributes to the creation of new treatments and strategies that optimize therapies from the beginning, avoiding ineffective treatments with multiple side effects, and progressing more and more towards a personalized high-quality technical medicine that increases cure rates and improves the quality of lifetime. Thanks to the computational technology that Chemotargets will provide, the process will be easier and faster and drugs that act on targets or mechanisms for which there is currently no effective treatment can be identified.

"This alliance is fully aligned with IMIM's main mission, which is to produce relevant science for patients. As a research institute of the Hospital de Mar, the IMIM has the strength of being very close to current medical needs. Through this alliance with Chemotargets, it will be possible to boost translational research at IMIM and respond to problems in a field as relevant as cancer", explains Dr. Joaquin Arribas, director of IMIM, director of Research at the Barcelona MAR Health Park and Research Professor ICREA.

With this strategic agreement, Chemotargets kicks off a new stage of the company's growth. Since achieving a leading position in the global market as a provider of intelligence and drug design prediction platforms, the team led by Dr Jordi Mestres has now embarked on the challenge of opening a second line of activity as a startup biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of drugs with its own portfolio of projects, initially focused on oncology.

"The collaboration with IMIM will allow us to build an oncology pipeline with biologically relevant and therapeutically validated targets, some of which are being evaluated by joint teams of IMIM and Chemotargets. This will become an important strategic pillar and value generator for the company that has already achieved significant success in creating and licensing its drug discovery software tools for small, medium and large pharmaceutical companies, as well as for regulatory authorities. To consolidate this new stage as a biotechnology company, we plan to open a round of financing with the advice and support of Genesis Biomed and CREA Inversión", explains Dr. Jordi Mestres, founder and current CEO of the company.

As a result of the collaboration with IMIM, Chemotargets will accelerate the main phases of drug discovery and development through the use of its advanced computer tools to simultaneously optimize the safety and efficacy of new candidates. By refining and computationally accelerating the traditional phases of medicinal chemistry, candidate selection, regulatory preclinical studies, and early clinical trials, the company wants to quickly position the drug candidate in an exit scenario through the creation of a spin-off under the venture builder model.

Chemotargets will continue to offer its products and services to pharmaceutical companies and research groups, as it has been doing since its foundation, through its platform CLARITY^? (Seal of Excelence of the European Commission), which allows to predict the pharmacology and safety profiles of new bioactive molecules. The license for this technology was acquired this year by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), among other organizations.

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