CDRD Collaborates with PANAMP to Share Complementary Research Infrastructure and Expertise

VANCOUVER, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Centre for Drug Research and Development (CDRD) and the Pan Alberta Metabolomics Platform (PANAMP) today announced that they have signed a preferred collaboration agreement to work together on projects of mutual interest.

“Both CDRD and PANAMP have established unique but complementary development platforms in Canada”

“Both CDRD and PANAMP have established unique but complementary development platforms in Canada”, said Karimah Es Sabar, Senior Vice President, Business & Strategic Affairs at CDRD. “This agreement is the starting point for both organizations to leverage each other’s expertise and infrastructure: PANAMP’s platform complementing CDRD’s mandate to translate academic research into important therapeutics”.

”This represents a wonderful opportunity for both the CDRD and PANAMP to use their expertise in a mutually beneficial partnership. Metabolomics is an essential part of many aspects of the drug development pipeline”, said Dr. Dave Wishart, PANAMP Director as well as Professor in the Departments of Computing Science and Biological Sciences, and in the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Alberta.

PANAMP has access to more than $5 million in state-of-the-art metabolomics infrastructure located at the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary. It is supported by a team of lab managers, NMR spectroscopists, mass spectrometrists, chemists, computer scientists, statisticians and bioinformaticians. PANAMP is capable of identifying and quantifying up to 2,000 different chemicals from certain biological samples, which is approximately five times more comprehensive than any other service currently available.

CDRD has a complete suite of drug development equipment and over 20,000 square feet of state-of-the art lab space located on the campuses of the University of British Columbia (UBC), Simon Fraser University (SFU) and the BC Cancer Agency. CDRD works with over 1,200 researchers across Canada through its network of affiliated institutions. As a unique “hybrid” organization, CDRD combines a drug development platform with a commercial arm, and has established a team of highly specialized and dedicated drug development personnel with both industry and academic-based backgrounds.

The collaborative projects coming out of this agreement will be managed by a joint steering committee comprised of representatives from both PANAMP and CDRD.

About the Pan Alberta Metabolomics Platform (PANAMP)

The Pan Alberta Metabolomics Platform (PANAMP) (www.panamp.ca) is a “distributed” core facility that has a unique combination of infrastructure and personnel to perform a wide range of cutting-edge metabolomic studies for clinical trials research, biomedical studies, bioproducts studies, nutrient profiling and environmental testing.

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 to commercialization stage. CDRD combines its drug development platform with a commercial arm (CDRD Ventures Inc.), which licenses technologies from affiliated institutions and establishes working collaborations and partnerships with other biotech and pharmaceutical 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).