- EntreChem and three Universities from three European countries to cooperate in the project.
- The European Commission has awarded €1 million to the ERA-IB project “NeBrasCa – Next Generation Immunosuppressants: Brasilicardin synthesized by Nocardia spp.” The project belongs to the European Research Agency – Industrial Biotechnology program (ERA-IB), and it aims to develop new brasilicardin analogs as new immunosuppressant drugs.
Professor Dr. Harald Groß, from the Department of Pharmaceutical Biology, of the Pharmaceutical Institute of Tübingen University (Germany), coordinates the project. EntreChem is the only company participating in the consortium, together with the Universities of Tübingen, Oviedo and Wroclaw.
Brasilicardin is a terpenoid secondary metabolite which is known to have an immunosuppressive activity and is produced by the soil bacterium Nocardia terpenica. It targets the amino acid transport system L and exhibits therefore a completely different mode of action than the established drugs. Brasilicardin analogs would represent a valuable drug option that can expand and complement todays immunosuppressant therapy.
NeBrasCa project aims at the biotechnological development of a brasilicardin analogs as new immunosuppressant drugs, since currently the development is halted due to supply issues, among them the fact that the original producer strain is a biosafety level 2 organism. In addition, despite considerable efforts, it is neither practical nor reasonable to generate the molecule by total synthesis. NeBrasCa wants to overcome this bottleneck with a biotechnological approach in order to produce and characterize optimized brasilicardin congeners, from which a candidate can be selected for preclinical development.
EntreChem SL is focused on the discovery and development of new drugs by bacterial genetic engineering and biocatalysis, and maintains collaborations with high-level academic labs in Europe and the USA for oncology development.
More information can be found by contacting:
Prof. Dr. Harald Groß: harald.gross@uni-tuebingen.de, +49 7071 297 6970
Dr. Francisco Morís: fmv@entrechem.com, +34 985 259 021
