Cenix BioScience and collaborators awarded major research grant from German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for RNAi screening in C. elegans.
 

Dresden, Germany, June 5, 2000  - Cenix BioScience GmbH today announced that it, along with collaborator and co-founder Prof. Anthony Hyman of the Max Planck Institute of Cell Biology and Genetics, has secured a major research grant totaling 1,171,000 Euro from the DHGP program of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

The funds will support the ground-breaking development of genome-scale RNAi screening methods, including the proof-of-principle identification of genes involved in animal cell division, relevant in developing new treatments for cancer and other proliferative diseases. This project, entitled "Genome wide RNAi screen to identify genes involved in the first embryonic cell divisions in C. elegans", and planned to run from 2000 to 2002, builds on the pioneering work started in 1998 by the company's three scientific founders, Drs. Echeverri, Hyman and Gönczy, and will help Cenix to establish proprietary industry-leading high throughput RNAi screening platforms for drug discovery and development.