Biopontis Alliance Fund and Rosa Announce Strategic Relationship for Early Stage Drug Development

Feb. 7, 2012 - PRLog -- Biopontis Alliance, Inc, (www.biopontisalliance.com) a unique firm combining early-stage capital investment with early-stage drug development, today announced that it has completed a strategic patrtnership agreement with Rosa and Co. (www.rosaandco.com), an advisory firm with leading expertise in PhysioPD and PKPD drug-disease modeling and simulation. Rosa’s capabilities will be key in helping the Biopontis Alliance  fund select the most promising candidate assets and efficiently advance them through the early-stage drug development process.

“BioPontis Alliance’s industry expertise and unique financial structure and asset sourcing, combined with our PhysioPD and PKPD technologies, is a powerful way to enhance investment returns through faster attrition, more informative studies, and deeper understanding of novel mechanisms of action and their potential clinical efficacy” said Ron Beaver, Ph.D., President and CEO of Rosa and Co. “We are proud to partner with BioPontis Alliance to quickly bring much-needed new medicines from novel academic research to market”

BioPontis Alliance is a game changing model.  The firm has established unique agreements with ten top academic research institutions (New York University, Columbia University, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, University of Pennsylvania, University of Virginia, University of North Carolina (CH), University of Florida, University of Kansas, Oregon Health & Sciences University and Thomas Jefferson University) that transform the licensee/licensor dynamic into an economic and scientific partnership.  Inventing scientists are fully engaged in the scientific development of their work under the direction of BIoPontis’ seasoned drug discovery management team. BioPontis also brings its network of world class contract drug discovery and development experts - such as Rosa & Co - alongside the expertise of the academic inventor and other university capabilities.  Investment by Biopontis Alliance in a portfolio of drug discovery assets is guided and aligned to market demand by the firm’s  pharmaceutical translational partner interests and development requirements; these are Merck, J&J and Pfizer.  

“Our guiding mission is to unleash more potential cures for human disease that are trapped inside our great academic institutions due to lack of financing and lack of expertise in how to translate great discoveries into real drug candidates,”  says Henri Lichenstein, Ph.D.,  CSO at BioPontis Alliance.  “We have to apply all the best tools to test our programs to be successful in this early stage of drug discovery;  modeling and knowledge mapping capabilities that Rosa can bring to our programs can help us to do the most intelligent studiess and to gain the most insights from them so that we can make good decisions about what to advance and when to let things go”  

“BioPontis is becoming a hub and a model for the integration of knowledge capital sourced from public and private, corporate or academic institutions including CROs, specialty expertise like Rosa & Co, or even the many resources of the NIH, “says Barbara Handelin, PhD, President.  .  “We are a model for a new paradigm in the first stage of drug discovery and development”

About Rosa
Rosa informs our customer’s most critical decisions – from preclinical through clinical development – with the creation and use of mathematical models that simulate disease physiology, drug action, patient variability, and trial outcomes. To address the full spectrum of related issues, Rosa offers two customized approaches: classic pharmacokinetic/ pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) models and Rosa’s innovative PhysioPD™ models. With these approaches, Rosa’s clients collaborate in model creation and testing, retain the final model, and acquire the ability to use it and understand its implications for their drug development programs. Rosa’s staff have unparalleled professional experience in using drug-disease modeling and simulation (M&S) to accelerate drug development and have completed hundreds of engagements with dozens of clients in multiple therapeutic areas. The Rosa team is unique in their breadth and depth of disease area experience, which includes metabolic and cardiovascular diseases, oncology, gastro-intestinal disease, inflammatory diseases, immune dysfunction (including rheumatoid arthritis), pain, skin conditions, respiratory disorders, and antibacterials/antivirals. For more information, visit www.rosaandco.com.

Rosa and the Rosa logo are registered trademarks of Rosa & Co. LLC.

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“Transforming relationships. Unleashing Innovation” BioPontis Alliance LLC is an asset-based investment capital fund combined with a research and development company, a novel business model built to address the crisis of the eroding basis for new therapeutic products on which the pharmaceutical industry and our healthcare system relies. The model capitalizes on the biopharmaceutical industry and fund management experience of the principals to manage investment funds and directly manage the development of a portfolio of technology assets. BioPontis Alliance has unique agreements for economic and scientific sharing with leading biomedical academic research institutions from which novel discoveries are selected and has aligned its scientific development engine with leading pharmaceutical players on the “buy side”. BioPontis Alliance is based in Raleigh NC with additional locations on the East coast.