RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK –DILIsym Services Inc., a Simulations Plus company (Nasdaq: SLP) has been awarded $1.5 million from Phase II of its previously announced Fast-Track Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant by the National Institutes of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK).
The company is developing in silico modeling software to help the pharmaceutical industry develop safe and effective drug therapies more effectively.
The second phase of the grant funding will support DILIsym Services’ continued development, validation, and testing of its RENAsym software for predicting drug-induced kidney injury.
Drug-induced kidney injury can be costly, and may require multiple interventions, including hospitalization. The development of the RENAsym software will provide a tool that can be used in drug development efforts to predict a drug’s potential to cause drug-induced kidney injury, as well as assess and improve the understanding of mechanisms of drug-induced kidney injury.
Brett Howell, Ph.D., president of DILIsym Services, said in a statement, “Our success with Phase I of this Fast-Track NIH grant demonstrates our commitment to help modernize drug development and reduce the time and costs associated with developing new therapies.
“With this continued NIH grant funding support, we will produce the first commercial version of RENAsym. Our team is dedicated to the development of commercial versions of RENAsym for use by the pharmaceutical industry, academic centers, and government agencies for investigation and screening of possible drug-induced kidney damage.”
In parallel with, and at the conclusion of the grant funding, the RENAsym Consortium is being formed to unite the world’s leading biopharmaceutical companies within a pre-competitive arena to collaborate, share ideas, and guide future development of RENAsym.
This new consortium is patterned after DILIsym Services’ successful DILI-sim Initiative, which has developed tools to predict and understand drug-induced liver injury.
