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Press Releases
OneWorld Health and BioFocus DPI Expand Collaboration to Develop New Drugs for the Treatment of Childhood Diarrheal Diseases - September 9, 2008 BioFocus DPI, the service division of Galapagos, and the Institute for OneWorld Health, a non-profit pharmaceutical company, announced today that they have expanded their 2006 collaboration in diarrheal disease drug discovery.
Under the expanded collaboration, BioFocus DPI is performing a high-throughput, cell-based functional screen to identify potential new drugs for the treatment of diarrheal diseases. The “hits” identified in this screen will be confirmed through a series of activity assays developed by BioFocus DPI specifically for this drug target.
In 2006, BioFocus DPI and the Institute for OneWorld Health initiated a collaboration to develop new drugs against childhood diarrheal disease in developing countries. During this initial collaboration, cell based functional assays have been developed by BioFocus DPI to find small molecule compounds with potential activity against a specific diarrheal disease target. In a separate partnership initiated by OneWorld Health with Roche in April 2008, OneWorld Health gained access to the Roche corporate collection of compounds, with the goal of using these compounds in screens as starting points to discover new therapies to treat childhood diarrhea. Under the expanded collaboration announced today, BioFocus DPI is screening 700,000 of these compounds on behalf of OneWorld Health in the cell-based functional assays developed by BioFocus DPI to identify inhibitors of the specific target.
Diarrheal diseases kill approximately two million children under the age of five in developing countries each year, which is more than the combined pediatric death toll due to AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
“We are very pleased to continue our alliance with OneWorld Health and to work with them to discover drugs to these neglected childhood diseases,” said Dr. Kate Hilyard, VP Biological Sciences, BioFocus DPI. “By applying the assays that we have developed for this diarrheal target against compounds from the Roche corporate collection, we aim to make significant advances in the identification of a broad pipeline of drug leads to treat these diseases.”
“BioFocus DPI’s high-throughput capabilities played a key role in our ability to access Roche’s compound library,” said Dr. Susan Wilson, Senior Director of the Institute for OneWorld Health’s Diarrheal Disease Program. “We are hopeful that through the combined efforts of these groups we increase our chances of finding a more effective treatment for childhood diarrheal diseases.”
About BioFocus DPI
BioFocus DPI aims to expand its partners’ drug pipelines by accelerating the gene-to-candidate discovery process. This is achieved through a comprehensive discovery platform, which includes target discovery in human primary cells, focused as well as diverse compound libraries, in vitro and cell-based screening, medicinal chemistry and ADME/PK services, supported by unique chemogenomic and informatics tools. As the service division of Galapagos, BioFocus DPI has over 300 employees in five countries worldwide.
About the Institute for OneWorld Health
The Institute for OneWorld Health, the first US nonprofit pharmaceutical company, develops safe, effective and affordable new medicines for people with infectious diseases in the developing world. The Institute for OneWorld Health, headquartered in San Francisco, California, USA, is a tax-exempt 501 (c) (3) US corporation.
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