VistaGen Therapeutics, a biotechnology company focused on using human stem cell technology for drug rescue and cell therapy, has been proactive in seeking strategic partnerships with other companies and research teams, all in an effort to facilitate the creation of an innovative drug discovery and drug rescue ecosystem.
VistaGen, with its stem cell technology platform designed to enable drug companies to save hundreds of millions of dollars in the drug development process by providing clinically relevant heart safety data earlier than traditional approaches, has gone out of its way to cultivate long term research and business collaborations, permitting the company to strengthen its core competencies and incorporate new ones. By strategically leveraging the capabilities of partners, VistaGen is constantly on top of the latest developments in the fast changing stem cell industry. VistaGen has always welcomed partnering requests, technology licensing offers, and other collaborative proposals.
Among VistaGen’s most notable current collaborative relationships are a stem cell research and development arrangement with Dr. Gordon Keller’s laboratory at Toronto’s University Health Network, a medicinal chemistry alliance with Synterys, and a regulatory and drug development agreement with Cato Research:
• University Health Network (UHN) is one of Canada’s largest research hospitals. Dr. Gordon Keller, among the world’s leading stem cell scientists and director of UHN’s McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine, is one of the co-founders of VistaGen and currently serves as Chairman of the company’s Scientific Advisory Board. Through a broad stem cell alliance of collaborative research, VistaGen, UHN, and Dr. Keller are advancing five key stem cell programs that support VistaGen’s core drug rescue initiatives and potential cell therapy applications.
• Synterys is an international medicinal chemistry and collaborative drug discovery services company headquartered near VistaGen in the San Francisco Bay Area. VistaGen’s strategic alliance with Synterys directly supports drug rescue applications of its Human Clinical Trials in a Test Tube™ platform. Synterys’ medicinal chemistry expertise will be a key component of VistaGen’s drug rescue activities focused on generating a pipeline of new chemical variants (drug rescue variants) of once-promising small molecule drug candidates discontinued in preclinical development due to heart safety concerns.
• Cato Research is a global contract research and development organization (CRO) with extensive experience implementing and conducting clinical trials and drug development programs, including highly-regarded regulatory expertise.
The current drug development approach to heart toxicity evaluation, based upon animal and in vitro cell culture tests, can only approximate human biology. VistaGen’s versatile stem cell technology platform uses pluripotent stem cells to create novel human cell-based bioassay systems for superior predictive toxicology, drug discovery, drug rescue, and cell therapy applications.
For additional information, visit VistaGen’s website at www.VistaGen.com
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