VANCOUVER, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Centre for Drug Research and Development (CDRD) today announced that Griffith University (Griffith) in Queensland Australia has signed an international affiliation agreement allowing for collaboration and the exchange of information between CDRD and Griffith’s researchers, which includes the Eskitis Institute for Cell & Molecular Therapies and the Griffith Health Institute.
“We are pleased to be announcing this international affiliation agreement between CDRD and Griffith University, as we believe there is much knowledge and expertise to share between our two regions to reach our shared goal of discovering and commercializing new medical therapeutics,” said Karimah Es Sabar, Senior Vice President, Business & Strategic Affairs at CDRD.
“CDRD continues to expand its pipeline of projects and international reach in order to augment the complementary strengths of its affiliated partners and work together to accelerate the drug development process,” added Es Sabar.
The signing of this international affiliation agreement builds upon a research project that was approved for funding from the Queensland government last year. CDRD and Eskitis are working together to screen Nature Bank, a unique storehouse of chemical diversity from nature, for compounds which can modify disease targets, followed by intensive chemistry efforts to synthesize the active compound.
Eskitis Institute Director Professor Ron Quinn said this was an exciting partnership that brought together complementary expertise to unlock the hidden medicinal resources in our environment.
“Nature Bank is our library of over 200,000 optimised natural product fractions derived from a collection of over 45,000 samples of plants and marine invertebrates from Australia, China and Papua New Guinea,” Professor Quinn said.
“We are now increasing the exposure of Nature Bank to the world through this collabration with CDRD,” Professor Quinn adds.
About CDRD
The Centre for Drug Research and Development (CDRD) (www.cdrd.ca) provides drug development expertise and infrastructure to enable researchers from leading academic and health research institutions to advance promising, early-stage drug candidates. CDRD combines its drug development platform with a commercial arm, which licenses technologies from affiliated institutions and establishes working collaborations with other biotech and lifesciences companies. The Government of Canada's Networks of Centres of Excellence program has recognized CDRD as a Centre of Excellence in Commercialization in Research (CECR).
About the Eskitis Institute, Griffith University
Based at Griffith University’s Nathan campus in Brisbane, Australia, the Eskitis Institute for Cell and Molecular Therapies (www.griffith.edu.au/eskitis) investigates novel drug- and cell-based therapies for human diseases in the thematic areas of cancer, infectious diseases and neurological diseases. The Institute works towards the development of new strategies to prevent and treat disease with an emphasis on multi-disciplinary research and collaboration within the Institute and with national and international partners.