The Basque biotechnology company Histocell, which specialises in cellular therapy for regenerative medicine, has reached a partnership agreement with NEURON BPh, a company dedicated to the prevention and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, to jointly develop an in vitro test for drugs to fight Alzheimer’s.

This agreement will enable a ready-to-use kit to be obtained which is unique in the world, by means of which the pharmaceutical industry will be able to test the effectiveness of drugs intended to fight Alzheimer’s disease and rule them out, without the drugs having to be tested previously on animals.

The alliance between these two companies covers the development and later validation of the product, as well as its later marketing to the pharmaceutical industry.

Histocell is a biotechnology company that has formed part of the Noray BG Basque business group (Noray Biosciences Group) since 2006. This company, whose headquarters are in the Bizkaia Technology Park in Derio, has several contracts with pharmaceutical companies and has applied for its first two patent applications, to which a third could be added before the end of the year. All this will enable Histocell to achieve turnover of 4.5 million euros in 2011.

On its part, NEURON BPh is a company founded in 2005 and located in the Health Sciences Technology Park in Granada. Among the private investors in this company that specialises in the prevention and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases are the Association of Relatives of Patients Suffering from Alzheimer ’s disease (Asociación de Familiares de Enfermos de Alzheimer) and the Autonomous University of Madrid (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid).