BioImage establishes internationally recognised individuals to its newlt-created scientific advisory board
BioImage has announced that it has appointed Soren Brunak (Technical University of Denmark), Tudor Oprea (University of New Mexico, Albuquerque), Gregory Petsko (Brandeis University Waltham), Roberto Solari (scientific advisor to Apax Partners) and Marino Zerial (MPI-CBG, Dresden) to its newly established scientific advisory board (SAB).
BioImage has pioneered the area of intracellular signaling dynamics in drug discovery.
The platform technology, Redistribution, has shown that it is possible to follow the dynamics of previously intractable drug targets in living cells in a high throughput mode, and that small molecules can be identified that selectively modulate these processes.
Axel Ullrich (Max Planck, Munich), chairman of BioImage's SAB, said, "BioImage has, through its unique scientific platform, shown that it is possible to modulate intracellular processes and drug targets that we previously regarded as intractable for therapeutic intervention.
I am therefore excited about the prospects of how this technology can provide drug candidates with novel mechanism of action.
The world-class SAB now assembled provides the scientific breadth to BioImage's drug discovery engine that will allow us to move into the next stage of the company's development". Patrik Dahlen, CEO of BioImage, added: "BioImage has gone through an exciting development from the early discovery of protein dynamics as indicators of specific cellular functions to the present identification of small molecule modulators of protein translocation.
These molecules are capable of selectively modulating the function of specific intracellular drug targets without affecting their catalytic activity.
The newly established SAB coming with experience from bioinformatics, cell signaling, intracellular trafficking, structural biology, chemoinformatics and drug discovery will be of immense importance for us in moving towards becoming an integrated drug discovery entity".
The SAB consists of the following members: Professor Axel Ullrich (Max Planck, Munich), chairman of the SAB, is a recognised expert in intracellular signaling with emphasis on the involvement of phosphatases and kinases in disease states.
Professor Ullrich is co-founder of three companies (including Sugen).
Professor Soren Brunak (Technical Univ of Denmark) has improved our understanding of how to predict protein function and cellular localisation from its primary sequence information.
Professor Marino Zerial (MPI-CBG, Dresden) has made significant contributions to the areas of vesicular trafficking and signaling, more recently with special emphasis on their exploitation in drug discovery.
Dr Roberto Solari (scientific advisor to Apax Partners) has a broad drug discovery experience from big pharma (Glaxo) to small biotech start-ups (Astex, Lorantis and Chroma Therapeutics). Professor Tudor Oprea (Univ New Mexico, Albuquerque) has pioneered the field of chemoinformatics with emphasis on screening-library design, QSAR studies and structure based drug design.
Prof Oprea was previously at AstraZeneca, Sweden. Professor Gregory Petsko (Brandeis Univ Waltham) is a highly recognised expert in structural biology with emphasis on linking protein crystallographic information to biochemical function. Prof Petsko is co-founder of the combinatorial chemistry company, Arqule.
