VTT Technical Research Center of Finland has spun-off Zora Biosciences, said to be the only company in the Nordic countries to offer metabolomics services to drug developers
Zora also develops biomarkers, which, for example, make it possible to detect early signs of cardiovascular disease.
Zora will provide sophisticated laboratory services to pharmaceutical industry in the area of metabolomics and associated bioinformatics.
Also, based on this advanced laboratory expertise Zora will develop prognostic and diagnostic biomarkers for human diseases as well as drug safety and efficacy monitoring.
Zora will aggressively expand its biomarker portfolio for licensing the discoveries to laboratory assay providers.
At present, Zora's biomarker portfolio includes a promising discovery for screening patients susceptible to side effects of statins, which are powerful cholesterol lowering drugs.
Statin medication is used by millions world-wide as part of their treatment regimen for cardiovascular diseases.
Zora is also developing prognostic and diagnostics tools for improved healthcare management of diabetes and coronary artery disease among other indication areas.
Zora is funded by VTT, Slovenian private investor Gomar DD, and Seedcap II, managed by Innofinance.
"Zora has strong potential for rapid business growth and internationalization, which has attracted a committed investor base for the company", says Reini Hurme, Zora CEO.
"Globally there are only a handful of companies specialising in metabolomics, in the Nordic countries Zora is the only one".
