Cenix BioScience awarded INNO-WATT grant from German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) for development of novel anti-malarial treatments.
 

Dresden, Germany, July 3, 2006  - Cenix BioScience GmbH today announced that it has secured grant support under the INNO-WATT program financed by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi). Over the coming two years, Cenix BioScience will be awarded a total of 369,000 Euro, for a project entitled "Pre-clinical development of ScarBI inhibitors against malaria infection" to support the work on the company's new malaria program.

In an RNAi study performed previously in collaboration with the laboratory of Dr. Maria Mota at the Instituto Medicine Molecular (IMM, Lisbon, Portugal), novel host factors needed for plasmodium infection of human liver cells were identified, again proving the power of the Cenix high throughput RNAi screening platform in this context. Funding for the current project includes validation experiments for newly-identified targets as well as small-scale lead optimization of small compound inhibitors to explore, develop and optimize novel treatments for malaria.