Universitat de Barcelona

The patented technology will allow developing a new generation of pharmacological chaperones.

The University of Barcelona, the Catalan Institution for Research Advanced Studies (ICREA) and the enterprise Minoryx have signed a licence agreement, through the Bosch i Gimpera Fundation, for a technology patented by the team led by researcher Xavier Barril, from the Department de Physiochemistry at the Faculty of Pharmacy, which will allow developing a new generation of pharmacological chaperones.

Pharmacological chaperones are a kind of drugs that base their mechanism of action on the rescue of protein function which has been lost due to genetic defects. This is a common situation in rare diseases, and pharmacological chaperones are presented as one of the most promising and innovative approaches to treat them. This potential is especially important in the case of diseases with a neurological component, which do not respond to usual treatment.

The technology developed by Xavier Barril allows identifying pharmacological chaperones that surmount the limitations these kinds of drugs have faced so far, which may allow a qualitative leap in this approach. Minoryx has initiated several projects in which this technology is exploited and it is expected to have for 2014 its first candidate interested in developing it.