Selvita, Orion Pharma achieve research milestone in Alzheimer’s disease programme

Selvita, a biotechnology company from Krakow, Poland announced that its collaboration with Orion Corporation from Espoo, Finland on SEL103 programme, for the symptomatic treatment of Alzheimer’s disease has reached the main research milestone. As a result, the jointly discovered molecules from two different chemical families will progress into further pre-clinical characterisation before the selection of a candidate into development.

The companies entered into a global collaboration with the aim to discover, develop and commercialise SEL103, Selvita’s proprietary programme for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and other cognitive disorders in 2010. Selvita is responsible for early research on the programme and Orion will take over the pre-clinical and clinical development as well as further commercialisation.

Under the terms of the agreement, Selvita is responsible for the discovery and Orion is responsible for the development and global commercialisation.

“The joint project with Orion and Selvita has been proceeding very well despite many challenges in the biology. I have enjoyed working with the open minded, enthusiastic, and goal-oriented team of Selvita that has been able to meet the pre-agreed deliverables of the project. Especially, Selvita’s medicinal chemistry design and synthesis people have even exceeded the high expectations we had in the start. While practical work is now gradually switching from Selvita to Orion’s responsibility I look forward to seeing confirmatory preclinical study results that would qualify compound(s) to be selected for further development and clinical studies” said Dr Jukka Sallinen, Head of CNS Research of Orion.

“We are delighted with the research progress in SEL103. The milestone with Orion is the first publicly announced milestone from Selvita integrated research collaborations and another proof of the skills of Selvita scientific team. We look forward to the further development of the programme by Orion,” said Pawel Przewiezlikowski, Chief Executive Officer, Selvita.

EP News Bureau – Mumbai