Collaboration to deliver a pre-clinical liver pharmaco-toxicological testing assay

Belgian company Promethera Biosciences is partnering with EMD Millipore to provide an improved ready-to-use microfluidic perfusion liver assay designed to perform more robust studies in pre-clinical toxicity and drug metabolism. The project for developing a new product combining the strengths of EMD Millipore’s Pearl microfluidic technology and of Promethera Biosciences H2Screen/H3Screen cells was selected by the Belgian Walloon Region Biocluster (BioWin) and the Massachusetts Life Sciences Centre (MLSC) following a call in April 2013. It will be funded EUR 900K in total for both partners.
 
“We are very pleased to initiate this collaboration with EMD Millipore and to combine our expertise to develop a ready to use liver based assay. We sincerely thank the Walloon region and the MLSC for funding this innovative project,” said Eric Halioua, chief executive officer of Promethera Biosciences.
 
“The opportunity to work closely with Promethera over the course of the project speaks to the nature of our organisation, enabling our partners to conduct potentially life-saving research,” says Robert Yates, president and CEO of EMD Millipore. “We are looking forward to building our relationship and more importantly to the outcomes this partnership has the potential to deliver. A sincere thanks to the MLSC for the opportunity to see what this collaboration can achieve and more importantly the continued support of the Massachusetts Life Sciences industry.”
  
Promethera Biosciences is a spin-off of the Universite Catholique de Louvain (UCL); founded in 2009 it evolved from the lab of Professor Etienne Sokal, a leading expert in pediatric liver disease and cells. Located in Mont-Saint-Guibert, Promethera Biosciences has raised EUR 34 million in two financial rounds, in capital, grants and loans from the Walloon Region. The main investors are Vesalius Biocapital, Mitsui Global Investment, BI Venture Fund, Shire and SRIW. The company has 46 employees led by an experienced management team.