MONTREAL, Dec. 10, 2013 /CNW Telbec/ - NEOMED, a leading drug discovery and development public-private partnership in Canada, today announced a new collaboration with Johnson & Johnson Innovation, and its affiliate Janssen Inc. Canada, to accelerate the transition of university and biotechnology company early-stage research into potential treatments.
Through this collaboration, teams of experienced technical experts at both the Johnson & Johnson Innovation Center in Boston, Massachusetts and NEOMED will work together to identify and advance medically important projects. These projects will come from NEOMED's network of partnered academic institutions and biotechnology companies, as well as from Canadian, US and international drug discovery groups.
"NEOMED welcomes the opportunity to work with the pharmaceutical researchers at Johnson & Johnson Innovation in this innovative business model," said Dr. Max Fehlmann, President and CEO of NEOMED and the NEOMED Institute. "Johnson & Johnson Innovation has been a pioneer in large Pharma external research and the reinvention of the drug discovery enterprise. We look forward to their valuable contribution in support of our mission of helping academia to efficiently translate early innovations into high value drug candidates."
Johnson & Johnson Innovation is the third global pharmaceutical company collaborator to join NEOMED since its founding in late 2012. The other global pharmaceutical company partners are AstraZeneca and Pfizer.
About NEOMED and the NEOMED Institute
NEOMED was set up one year ago to support the transition of promising drug discovery technologies and therapeutic approaches emerging from academic and biotechnology companies, and to bring these emerging therapeutics to IND or Phase II human proof-of-concept, which are stages when the drug candidates become most attractive to the biopharmaceutical companies. NEOMED is jointly funded by AstraZeneca, Pfizer and the Ministère des Finances et de l'Économie du Québec.
NEOMED's sole focus is drug discovery, and preclinical and early clinical drug development. It has a team of scientists with industry-level expertise and capabilities ranging from medicinal chemistry, drug target validation studies through animal pharmacology, toxicology and clinical trials design and implementation.
NEOMED is established within the NEOMED Institute, a state-of-the-art R&D facility in the Montreal Technoparc. The Institute acts as an open-access drug discovery hub hosting drug discovery and development research companies, providing a unique environment to foster innovation, collaboration and creativity.
For more information, please visit: www.neomed.ca
SOURCE: NEOMED
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Mounia Azzi, PhD
Director, Scientific Affairs
NEOMED
(514) 909-7714
[email protected]
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