Date: 2011-02-22
Type of information: Grant
Company: Beactica (Sweden)
Investors:
Amount: €700 000
Funding type: grant
Planned used: The funding will be used for the FluCure project.
Others: Beactica, a Swedish fragment-based drug discovery company, has received a grant of up to €700 000 from the EU 7th Framework Programme to support the Company’s pioneering work in the area of influenza. In the FluCure project, Beactica will apply its proprietary fragment-based drug discovery platform, Sprint™, to accelerate the identification and optimization of novel small molecules targeting influenza. Globally, seasonal influenza epidemics result in 3 to 5 million severe cases of illness and 250,000 to 500,000 deaths each year. The effectiveness of current anti-viral drugs to tackle influenza is restricted by the rapid appearance of new drug-resistant strains. Beactica will work with a consortium of top European researchers to develop small-molecule therapeutics that target the viral ribonucleoprotein complex, which is the replication core of the virus. Beactica’s partners include several academic centres of excellence as well as Vironova AB, Sweden, and Pike Pharma GmbH, Switzerland. The project builds on the successes of FluDrugStrategy, a previous research project also funded by the 7th EU Framework Programme. FluCure runs over four years.
Therapeutic area: Infectious diseases
