CARDIOREG Alliance: ZeClinics and Taros to Develop New Heart Regeneration Therapies

BARCELONA, Spain and DORTMUND, Germany, Jan. 30, 2019 -- ZeClinics SL, a biotech firm focused on preclinical services with zebrafish and Taros Chemicals GmbH, a company specializing in drug discovery and medicinal chemistry join forces to develop novel therapies for the treatment of ischemic heart disease, representing the leading cause of death worldwide.

"We are thrilled that Taros has joined our efforts to identify therapeutic targets promoting heart regeneration after ischemic injury. Their extensive knowledge in drug discovery including computer-aided drug design will prove pivotal in identifying hit and lead compounds," said Dr. Simone Calzolari, chief commercial officer at ZeClinics.

Taros will be responsible for hit generation and optimization, involving in silico screening as well as synthesis of the hit candidate. ZeClinics in turn will evaluate the pro-regenerative function of candidate genes through the development of zebrafish transgenic models and the in vivo characterization of relevant cardiovascular parameters with their ZeCardio software platform.

"Cardiac regeneration can effectively compensate the loss of cardiac muscle after ischemic injury but molecular mechanisms enabling it are dormant in humans," said Dr. Torsten Hoffmann, Senior Vice President Drug Discovery at Taros. "We have an exciting opportunity to discover new molecules promoting heart functional recovery upon ischemia."

CARDIOREG falls under the German-Catalonian Joint Research and Development Project. The project will be overseen by the German BMWi, the Catalan ACCIÓ and AiF Projekt GmbH.

About Zeclinics SL
ZeClinics is an innovative biotech firm committed to streamlining discovery and preclinical development of novel compounds with zebrafish, an ideal vertebrate model for fast, cost-effective and highly predictive assessments. ZeClinics combines in-house academic expertise with a diversified, cutting-edge portfolio: from CRISPR-licensed gene editing, high-throughput safety and efficacy assays to disease models. For more information: www.zeclinics.com

About Taros Chemicals
Taros, a privately owned CRO has been serving pharmaceutical, biotech and chemical companies since 1999. Within our drug discovery division, our mission is to accelerate potential new medicines into clinical development. Taros adds considerable value to drug discovery collaborations by boosting collaborators' discovery programs from target validation and hit identification to lead generation and optimization. Taros' capabilities include medicinal chemistry, computational sciences and innovative compound libraries. Taros has been leading the chemistry activities of the European Lead Factory (ELF), EU's 196 million EUR drug discovery platform and is involved in the 11 million EUR Drug Discovery Hub Dortmund. For more information: www.taros.de

Contact:
Taros Chemicals GmbH & Co. KG
Youri R. Mesmoudi
Emil-Figge-Str. 76a
44269 Dortmund
Tel.: +49(0)231-974272-11
e-mail: info@taros.de

This release was published on openPR.