Celtarys Research, a startup developing innovative chemical biology solutions, participates in a EIC Pathfinder project focused on optimizing GPCR drug discovery

Asebio

21 de Noviembre de 2023

Celtarys Research, a young biotech spin-off from the University of Santiago de Compostela, has been selected as part of a European consortium awarded with one of the highly selective Pathfinder projects from the European Innovation Council.

Together with the German company ISAR Bioscience and other academic and SME partners from the Czech Republic, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, Celtarys is part of the Unisens project, designed with the aim to develop a disruptive technology for the discovery of GPCR receptors modulators - the largest and most important group of therapeutic drugs-.

UniSens project has now just started and will last for 4 years with the ambition of revolutionizing the field of GPCR drug discovery. This large family of membrane receptors represents the most important target for therapeutic drugs and is the focus of a multi-billion-dollar drug discovery industry. However, better methods for their characterization are needed, to unlock their potential in a wide variety of pathologies, from cancer to neurological, inflammatory or metabolic disorders.

Celtarys' proprietary chemical conjugation technology will contribute to the development of new chemical tools based on conformation-sensitive fluorescent βArrestin sensors that will be used to correlate GPCRs modulators to specific downstream cellular events in a multiplex format. This will ultimately allow unambiguous classification of functionally selective drugs, making GPCR drug discovery more efficient, less resource-intensive and better equipped to develop more effective therapeutics.