The Groningen-based ageing research center ERIBA is joining forces with Cleara, a biotech company focused on treating age-related conditions.
Cleara, a Dutch preclinical research and development biopharmaceutical company, will be working together with ERIBA, the European Research Institute of the Biology of Ageing, which is part of the Healthy Ageing Campus of Campus Groningen.
Biopharmaceuticals are drugs or treatments that rely on biological sources (blood, tissue or cells, among others) at some point in their production. Cleara’s research focuses on developing and discovering therapeutics (treatments or medication) for senescent (ageing) cells “to treat age-related pathologies and therapy-resistant cancer.”
Senescent cells accumulate in the body as we age, and part of Cleara’s research has looked into the effect of removing these cells from mice in a lab. That research has resulted in drugs that help stop the side effects of chemotherapy in mice with cancer.
One of Cleara’s scientific co-founders is Marco Demaria, who also serves as the group leader of the Laboratory of Cellular Senescence and Age-related Pathologies at ERIBA. Demaria will lead Cleara’s Groningen collaboration with ERIBA, which is one of three public-private partnerships which the the Utrecht-based company announced on 6 July. ERIBA is a part of the University Medical Center Groningen and specializes in research on molecular mechanisms that trigger the age-related decline in the function of non-dividing cells.
In a statement to Business Wire, Demaria explained the range of ways that senescent cells impact health: “muscle loss, kidney disease, heart disease, and even cancers. That’s why mice live longer and healthier when we eliminate their senescent cells, they stop dying of the diseases that they would otherwise suffer from.”
According to a press release from Campus Groningen, Cleara will also be working together with the University Medical Center Utrecht (UMCU) and the Medical University of Graz in Austria.
