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Vyant Bio enters collaboration with OrganoTherapeutics to find treatments for Parkinson's Disease

Published: 07:20 30 Mar 2022 EDT

Vyant Bio -
OrganoTherapeutics is a spin-off from the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the University of Luxembourg

Vyant Bio (NASDAQ:VYNT) Inc said it has entered into a collaboration agreement with OrganoTherapeutics to accelerate the discovery of drugs to treat Parkinson's Disease (PD).

The collaboration brings together the companies' expertise in drug discovery using human-derived cells, high-throughput biology and chemistry, and machine learning-based therapeutic design to identify potential drugs to treat PD.

"This collaboration with OrganoTherapeutics is another example of Vyant Bio's commitment to accelerate the discovery and development of transformative therapies for patients living with severe CNS (central nervous system) diseases,” said Dr Robert Fremeau, Vyant Bio's chief scientific officer in a statement. “Together, we will expand our human-first platform in neurodevelopmental disorders such as Rett Syndrome and CDKL5 deficiency disorder into Parkinson's Disease and ultimately other neurodegenerative disorders."

READ: Vyant Bio fires up its drug discovery engine to speed up novel therapeutics for brain diseases

The companies will focus on the identification of drug candidates that rescue the PD phenotype through the development of disease-linked, clinically-translatable assays and biomarkers through multiple molecular, biochemical, and cellular methods. This approach integrates and leverages OrganoTherapeutic's complex, patient-derived, 3D-organoid disease models derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), and Vyant Bio''s iPSC expertise and its AnalytiX machine learning technology, the Cherry Hill, New Jersey-based biotechnology company said.

"We know that therapies for diseases that affect the CNS are difficult to discover: it requires meaningful innovation and exceptional scientific expertise to tackle," said Jay Roberts, CEO of Vyant Bio.

Jens Schwamborn, OrganoTherapeutics co-founder and CEO, also commented, saying: "The specific genetic and environmental causes in most Parkinson's patients are unknown. By focusing initially on disease-linked genetic mutations, we plan to identify common causes and potential therapeutic approaches that can be expanded into the much larger patient population. We look forward to integrating our approaches with Vyant Bio."

"This collaboration is another in a series of strategic moves to focus our efforts while accelerating our position in drug discovery through the use of technologies that allow insight into human biology early in the discovery of CNS drugs," added Schwamborn.

OrganoTherapeutics is a spin-off from the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the University of Luxembourg and has developed a human Parkinson's disease patient-specific midbrain organoid based drug development pipeline.

Contact the author at jon.hopkins@proactiveinvestors.com

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