Telara Pharma (Lead coordinator, Madrid, Spain), Fundación para la Investigación Biomédica del Hospital Gregorio Marañón (FIBHGM, Madrid, Spain) and Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM, Madrid, Spain) together have received €841.000, combining grants and loan, from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and University (“Ministerio de ciencia, innovación y universidades”) for executing preclinical in vitro and in vivo experiments to characterize the mechanism of action of cilastatin to act as a preventive treatment in acute and chronic inflammatory indications *.
The funds are from a competitive call through the 2023 public-private partnership (“Proyectos de colaboración Público-Privada”) state programme to support biotech companies and research centres through different programs within the “Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica, Técnica y de Innovación 2021-2023”.
Dr. Alberto Lázaro, Cofounder and Chief Scientific Officer, explains that “Our recent work identified a clear nephroprotective effect of cilastatin in models of Acute kidney injury (AKI) revealing a great therapeutic potential of cilastatin as an inhibitor of specific apoptosis processes, thus preventing cell damage that can occur due to the administration of toxins, infectious or inflammatory processes” and “thanks to support from the Spanish Government, the consortium will be able to address the mechanism of action behind the neuroprotective effect of cilastatin”. He added, “In this project, we aim at validating and characterizing of the protective activity of cilastatin to assess its ability to prevent renal damage in AKI in other chronic inflammatory pathologies”.
*Proyecto CPP2022-009633 financiado por MCIN/AEI /10.13039/501100011033 y por la Unión Europea NextGenerationEU/ PRTR.