Successful Start by Assay.Works in Regensburg
Asssay.Works GmbH is launching as a Contract Research Organization (CRO). This means the company offers its expertise in assay development and optimization in the search for active substances for new medicines. The clients are biotech companies and pharma enterprises, but also research institutes. Assay.Works uses its high-tech infrastructure in quantitative biology and high-throughput screening (HTS). The processes are so automated that millions of different samples can be tested.
The team at Assay.Works has already gained extensive experience in the search for novel substances in oncology, neurology, inflammatory and metabolic diseases in a HTS Center at a leading international biotech company. In this process in the past 16 years in more than 250 active substance screening campaigns over 100 million tests have been carried out. The decisive factor for success in researching active substances is the development of the company’s own active substance libraries. Assay.Works currently has 75,000 small molecules, 97,000 siRNA gene sequences and 120 cell culture lines (transmembrane targets) available for the search for novel substances.
The two founders and managing directors Dr Ralf Schwandner (CEO) and Dr. Johannes Knop (COO) have already been able to establish their armamentarium at the Regensburg location initially at Tularik Deutschland GmbH and later at Amgen Research GmbH from the USA and consistently develop with state-of-the-art technology. Additionally the founders have expanded this expertise with cooperation with Metrion Biosciences Ltd in renowned Cambridge in Great Britain.
The British company is also a CRO service provider which has specialized in the development of electrophysiological testing systems for ion channels. This plays a critical role in the development of medicines which act on the cell membrane. In this process a specific potassium channel in the heart muscle (hERG channel) can be tested to exclude posible cardiac side effects. A further platform from Metrion Biosciences Ltd enables the testing of neuronal cells so that new active substances or neurotoxins can also be tested.
This cooperation makes it possible in the future for clients of both companies to access an even broader technology platform in the development of novel medicines. With this cooperation the Regensburg location in addition to Cambridge is linked to one of the most innovative locations in Europe.
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