Almirall, S.A. and the Electronic and Atomic Protein Modeling Group (EAPM) from the Life Sciences Department of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) have entered into a research collaboration, SilicoDerm, a project focused on computational drug design applied to dermatological therapeutic targets.
SilicoDerm aims to develop novel high-performance computational methodologies that facilitate the identification of active compounds for the treatment of inflammatory skin diseases of Almirall’s interest, such as psoriasis and atopic dermatitis. The project scope encompasses from the development of the computational methodologies for two novel therapeutics targets, to the synthesis and evaluation of the compounds identified in-silico. The new protein-based 3D virtual screening methodologies of SilicoDerm will allow to study thousands of compounds in a faster and a more reliable way than current computational methodologies.
Dr. Jordi Gràcia, Head of Drug Discovery, Almirall, commented: “Our collaboration with BSC is an outstanding opportunity for Almirall R&D. The application of these novel computational methodologies for drug design will facilitate the identification of new compounds, and therefore, reduce the time of development of new drugs that will broaden our spectrum of potential treatments for unmet medical needs in patients with skin diseases.”
At the same time, Dr. Víctor Guallar, leader of the Electronic and Atomic Protein Modelling Group from the Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS), stated: “This project shows the maturity of the modeling techniques developed at BSC to address real life drug design projects. We invested many years of research to get here.”
This project is being financed by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICINN) through the grants Reto de Colaboración 2017 and co-financed by FEDER funds from the European Commission.
For more information, please visit almirall.com
