Biobase to Coordinate Consortium to Study Mechanisms of Disease

Biobase received a EU research contract to develop technology to analyze complex disease mechanisms. The three-year, Euro 3-million project, called Net2Drug, will be coordinated by Biobase and developed as a collaboration with several international participants.

"Understanding the mechanism of disease is the key to rationalizing drug development," comments Edgar Wingender, president and CSO of Biobase. “Net2Drug will provide a knowledge-based approach for identifying critical components in the gene regulatory network that accounts for a specific disease.”

The project will integrate bioinformatics, chemoinformatics, and experimental methods to identify potential therapeutic targets. "This approach,” says Wingender, “will enable researchers to confidently select promising drug targets and efficiently identify chemical compounds directed against these targets."

The Net2Drug consortium includes  Progenika Biopharma, University of Helsinki, Fraunhofer Institute fur Toxikologie und Experimentelle Medizin, University of Gottingen/Medical School, Institute of Systems Biology Novosibirsk (Russia), Institute of Biomedical Chemistry of Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Moscow Microbiology and Tumor Biology Center, Karolinska Institute (Sweden), and the CNR-ITB Institute of Biomedical Technologies (Italy).