A Research Consortium Under the Direction of Grünenthal Will Receive a Grant of €1.5 million From the European Fund for Regional Development and the Federal State of North Rhein-Westphalia - Seite 2

Dr. Gregor Bahrenberg, the NeuRoWeg project coordinator and Laboratory Head at Grünenthal, added, "We continually strive to identify novel test systems with which we can more reliably and more rapidly characterize whether new drugs will be effective in humans. In order to achieve this, we want to collaborate with our partners to establish innovative assays employing stem cells derived from human skin or blood cells to advance the means for identifying novel pain medications which can cure patients. To this end, we will combine the expertise of renowned specialists with cutting-edge technologies.

"The ultimate aim is to predict the efficacy of new drugs in order to select the most suitable of the many research compounds for clinical development."

Dr. Petra Bloms-Funke is Head of the Department of Medical Intelligence and Innovation Partnerships and responsible for the acquisition of non-dilutive research funding for Grünenthal Innovation, the Research and Development Unit. She adds: "Our cooperative project NeuRoWeg will enhance our understanding of pain as a disease and how to cure it. A key problem in the development of new medicines is the poor ability of currently available test systems to predict efficacy in patients. This can lead to high failure rates during clinical development. We anticipate a considerable improvement with the highly innovative test systems we have planned. The consortium was founded because the success of this highly complex project will require coordinated contributions from highly specialized experts from different areas. Together we can advance and accelerate the development of new and effective pain medications, and make them available to patients more quickly than possible today. We are greatly looking forward to this inter-disciplinary collaboration."

Consortium Research Project 

Under the direction of Grünenthal, the University Hospital Cologne, the University Hospital Bonn, and the company Life & Brain in Bonn will each contribute their respective expertise to improve the development of new and effective drugs:

• Grünenthal, Aachen (Dr. Petra Bloms-Funke, Dr. Gregor Bahrenberg) - emergence and therapy of neuropathic pain; characterization of specific target proteins in cells (pain targets); identification and selection of new drugs
• University Hospital Bonn (Prof. Oliver Brüstle, Dr. Michael Peitz) - generation and differentiation of stem cells for therapeutic use in the treatment of and research into neurological disorders
• Life & Brain, Bonn (Prof. Oliver Brüstle, Dipl. Biol. Simone Haupt) - application of stem cell technologies for the development of predictive biological test systems
• University Hospital Cologne (Prof. Tim Hucho) - application of a special microscope technology, the so-called High Content Screening procedure, to investigate pain mechanisms and drug effects in pain cells

About the funding of bio-medical research and development in North Rhein-Westphalia with resources from the EU and of the Federal State of NRW