WeLab Barcelona and Fundación MEDINA will collaborate to expand the offer of R&D services and capabilities for the discovery and development of new medicines

Accelerating the path to clinical development of drug discovery projects coming from academic, biotechnological or pharmaceutical initiatives is essential for the discovery of new therapeutic strategies. For this reason, WeLab Barcelona, an integrated research centre for drug discovery and preclinical development driven by Leitat, and Fundación MEDINA, a centre of excellence in Innovative Medicines Research, are pleased to announce their collaboration to provide services for new therapeutic agents, in order to accelerate the identification and development of innovative therapies from small molecule research and natural products.

The collaboration leverages WeLab and MEDINA’s extensive expertise in drug discovery and the wide portfolio of cutting-edge technologies, to facilitate the identification of new compounds and/or speed-up the path to clinical development of drug discovery projects from academia, biotech, or pharmaceutical companies. In the words of José Miguel Vela, Scientific Director of WeLab: "Innovation has many ingredients, but a single formula: COLLABORATION. Welab Barcelona is actively collaborating with strategic partners to strengthen the portfolio of R&D services and provide better and faster R&D solutions. This collaboration will allow both private non-for-profit organizations to join forces by adding complementary research capabilities, expertise, and knowledge. It is our strong conviction that collaboration is the way for dealing with health challenges of our time, particularly the discovery of new drugs addressing unmet medical needs".

In the same vein, Dr Olga Genilloud, Scientific Director of MEDINA: "We believe that this unique collaboration between two complementary drug discovery Centres and our combined multidisciplinary approach is a unique opportunity to strengthen the drug discovery and development capacities in Spain and to support academics as well as biotech and pharma companies to advance their early preclinical R&D pipelines".

The two major centres will combine research expertise and knowledge of biology, chemistry, and pharmacology to enable the advancement of new drug identification and development in Spain.

About WeLab:

Founded in 2020 by Acondicionamiento Tarrasense (Leitat) through the acquisition of the Drug Discovery & Preclinical Development centre from Esteve Pharmaceuticals S.A., Our goal is to become a tool of the global pharmaceutical research and innovation ecosystem by providing R&D pharma services and solutions to both pharma/biotech companies and partners in the public innovation sector, including academia, research centres and National Health Systems. WeLab Barcelona is formed by experienced scientists with cutting-edge equipment and technologies, and a proven track record across the entire drug discovery and development cycle, successfully translating new discoveries into medicines. Welab is engaged in multiple collaborative research programs to discover new drugsto treat, among others, rare, neurologic and neurodegenerative diseases, pain, respiratory diseases, cancer, and infectious diseases. WeLab’s R&D site, located in the Parc Científic of Barcelona (PCB), is the largest integrated Drug Discovery Centre in Spain (www.welabbarcelona.com)

About Fundación MEDINA:

Fundación MEDINA is a non-for-profit research organization established as a Spanish publicprivate partnership between Merck Sharp, Dohme de España, the Regional Government of Andalusia and the University of Granada to discover new drugs for unmet medical needs. Fundación MEDINA is a recognized international leader in natural products discovery and develops collaborative programs with academic and industrial partners worldwide. Taking advantage of its unique natural products libraries and cutting-edge technology HTS screening platforms, MEDINA is actively developing drug discovery programs focused among others on the identification of new drugs for infectious diseases, including neglected tropical diseases, oncology and neurodegeneration. MEDINA is located in the Health Sciences Technology Park (PTS), in Granada, Spain (www.medinadisovery.com).