Oss – 13 November 2012 – Netherlands Translational Research Center B.V. (NTRC) today announced that it has entered into an exclusive license agreement with Merck & Co, Inc., through its affiliate MSD Oss B.V. Under the terms of the agreement, NTRC has obtained a worldwide exclusive license to develop and commercialize a series of investigational, pre-clinical protein kinase inhibitor candidates, which are understood to be involved in autoimmune disease, inflammation and certain types of cancer.
NTRC is a biotech company recently established at the Pivot Park in Oss, the Netherlands (previously known as the Life Sciences Park Oss). NTRC translates academic science into small molecule drug candidates. The license agreement with Merck enables NTRC to expand its drug discovery portfolio with an advanced lead optimization project in the field of immunology.
The founders of NTRC, Guido Zaman and Rogier Buijsman, are former employees of MSD/Organon in the Netherlands. ”Together with our team, we have worked on this project for several years within N.V. Organon and MSD,” said Zaman. “We are very excited to continue this project at NTRC,” said Buijsman.
The Pivot Park in Oss is located at the former research site of MSD in the Netherlands. NTRC is one of the tenants. Besides small molecule drug discovery, NTRC Services provides compound profiling services on a unique cancer cell line panel. In addition, NTRC Services develops assays for ultra-high throughput screening at the Pivot Park for other pharmaceutical companies.
Netherlands Translational Research Center B.V. (NTRC) is a company based in Oss, the Netherlands, that develops scientific ideas into small molecule drug candidates. In addition, NTRC Services provides fee-for-service activities to pharmaceutical industries in the field of chemical biology and compound profiling, using its technology platforms EntropySelect™, SynergyFinder™ and Oncolines™. For more information on the drug discovery activities of NTRC or NTRC Services, see the website of NTRC: www.ntrc.nl, or send an e-mail to info@ntrc.nl.
