German Biopharmaceutical Partners to Seek Osteoarthritis Drug

Two German biopharmaceutical companies are joining forces to develop a new class of drugs for treatment of osteoarthritis.

At the present time there are no truly effective treatments for osteoarthritis of the knee, which, according to the World Health Organization, effects more than 5% of adults over the age of 40 (more than 30 million people) in the developed countries.

To boost the search for drugs to treat osteoarthritis, Biopharm GmbH (Heidelberg, Germany) and Merck Serono (Darmstadt, Germany) have agreed to embark on a two-year joint discovery program focused on a potential pro-anabolic osteoarthritis modifying drug based on a growth factor derived from Biopharm's growth factor platform technology.

According to the terms of the agreement, Biopharm will provide variants of a wild type protein, which is thought to drive hyaline joint cartilage formation during embryogenesis and seems to be associated with osteoarthritis, as well as early preclinical research services. More...