Organon, the human healthcare business unit of Akzo Nobel and Entelos, Inc. has announced a two-year extension of their ongoing rheumatoid arthritis (RA) collaboration. Financial terms were not disclosed.

"We are very pleased to continue our partnership with Organon," stated James Karis, president and CEO of Entelos. "Organon was one of the first companies to recognize the potential impact of Entelos' biosimulation capability and therapeutic expertise. We believe that our ability to consistently deliver value to our customers improves their prospects of developing drugs which directly benefit patients suffering from serious complex diseases such as RA."

"The collaboration with Entelos has generated candidate targets and biomarkers which will be pursued under the extension of our collaboration", said David Nicholson, executive vice president, research and development at Organon. "We continue to seek partnerships that move us to the forefront of RA research and development and look forward to the future benefits of Entelos' in silico approach in target and biomarker validation."

In silico R&D is an innovative, rapid and predictive research method aimed at increasing efficiency and productivity across the entire drug discovery and development pipeline. Using virtual patients and virtual drugs and targets, experiments are simulated in a computer; thereby rapidly testing what would otherwise take months or years to do in the laboratory or clinic.

Organon and Entelos have collaborated since 2001 to develop the Entelos Rheumatoid Arthritis PhysioLab platform, a large-scale, mathematical model that captures the overall disease process and allows the simulation of both current therapies and drugs in development. Over 700 biological functions or pathways are included in the platform, enabling researchers to predict and evaluate clinical outcomes in response to therapeutic interventions and novel approaches in virtual patients spanning the wide range of real patients in the clinic.

Organon creates, manufactures and markets innovative prescription medicines that improve the health and quality of human life. Through a combination of innovation and business partnerships.