Alliance to Develop Drugs to Treat Strokes

Two companies are collaborating in an effort to develop drugs to treat strokes. The Israeli biotechnology company Quark Biotech (Rehovot, Israel) will perform high-throughput screening of chemical libraries while Fujisawa Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (Japan) will continue the development of candidate drugs. Using Quark's technologies and chemical libraries, the companies expect to have several small molecules validated in proof of concept biological experiments within several months.

Fujisawa has exclusive rights on the resulting products on a worldwide basis, and Quark has an option to co-market certain products in the United States and the European Community countries. The two companies initially agreed in 1999 to collaborate in the discovery of genes for use as targets for drug development aimed at neuron protection and facilitation of post-stroke recovery. The current alliance now goes beyond target gene discovery into drug discovery.

"We have made an equity investment in Quark Biotech because of our belief in their ability to quickly and successfully identify disease-causing genes and discover novel compounds,” said Toshio Goto, corporate vice president, research, at Fujisawa.





Related Links:
Quark Biotech
Fujisawa Pharmaceutical Co