European ScreeningPort and Merck sign research agreement

European ScreeningPort GmbH, a public-private partnership company providing drug discovery services to academics entered into an agreement with Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, as part of the New Drugs Fighting Neurological Diseases Consortium (NEU2).

Under the agreement, European ScreeningPort will use its expertise to develop a high-throughput screening assay for a drug target implicated in multiple sclerosis. The screen will then be used to identify small molecules as the starting point for drug discovery.

Carsten Claussen, Managing Director of Hamburg-based European ScreeningPort, said the agreement represents another step forward for the company, and also shows the attraction for big pharma in setting up collaboration with organisations that span the academic- industry divide. “We will contribute to this project with our expertise and highly flexible approach,” Clausen said.

European ScreeningPort is a public-private-partnership offering fee-for-service small molecule screening to academic institutions. The goal is to provide the missing link in Europe between academic research and the pharmaceutical industry.

The NEU2 consortium, including, amongst others, Merck KGaA, Evotec AG, European ScreeningPort GmbH, Bionamics GmbH, and the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, was successful in Germany’s nationwide BioPharma strategy competition run by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium fuer Bildung und Forschung - BMBF). This aims to promote innovative partnerships between academic institutions, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies to strengthen the pharmaceutical value chain in Germany. The NEU2 consortium focuses on the development of novel therapies against neurological diseases with a specific focus on multiple sclerosis.