Thuris and The Chinese National Center for Drug Screening (CNCDS) announced the initiation of a collaboration designed to evaluate the therapeutic activity of CNCDS's proprietary compounds with Thuris' RapidAging animal models. Thuris will test kinase, protease, and inflammatory inhibitors selected from the chemical libraries of the CNCDS.

RapidAging is a system for testing potential anti-aging and Alzheimer's disease drugs directly against primary pathologies including neurofibrillary tangles, amyloid toxicity, inflammatory reactions, microglialactivations and others. Thuris' system creates these pathologies in just six days, in intact slices of living brain tissue. The technologies enable the rapid, precision testing of drug candidates against any or all of these targets, chronically or acutely.

"This collaboration with the Chinese National Center for Drug Screening represents an important expansion of our in-licensing efforts. We are in a unique situation in that the Thuris technologies rapidly recreate the human hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease and other disorders in living brain tissue. Being able to test compounds from the vast libraries of the CNCDS against such pathologies brings us significant leverage in the search for mechanism-based drugs. The head of the CNCDS, Dr. Ming-Wei Wang, is among the most respected executives in China; we are very pleased to be working with Dr. Wang and the CNCDS," said Keith B. Hoffman, Vice President of Business Development and IP at Thuris.

"Our collaboration with Thuris is a part of the CNCDS's recent expansion of international co-operations in drug discovery and development. The scope of this collaboration is consistent with our therapeutic focus that includes oncology, neurological disorders and metabolic diseases. I believe that both parties will be benefited from this joint efforts by using the RapidAging system developed at Thuris and the diversified chemical and natural product libraries of the CNCDS," added Ming-Wei Wang, Executive Deputy Director, The Chinese National Center for Drug Screening.