Luxembourg, 14/05/2007 (Agence Europe) - The European Investment Bank (EIB) and the Instituto de Credito Oficial (ICO) are jointly providing a €50 million facility to Zeltia Group (EIB: €30 million and ICO €20 million) to support the biopharmaceutical research and development activities of its subsidiary company PharmaMar. These R&D activities are aimed at strengthening the company's priority areas, primarily oncology, through products targeting different forms of cancer.
PharmaMar is Spain's leading biotech company dedicated to developing innovative anticancer treatments from marine origin. The company founded in 1986 currently has five compounds in clinical development and a large preclinical pipeline, as well as a marine library of more than 42,000 micro- and macro-organisms. Two of PharmaMar's compounds in advanced clinical development have received several orphan drug designations from the European Union and are being developed for both high incidence and rare cancers.
The EIB recalls in a press release that life sciences are one of the main sections of the 7th EU Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. The EIB Group centres its financing on three objectives paving the way for technological modernisation and the tailoring of human capital to the European economy of tomorrow. These objectives include research and development (including downstream development). The group supports innovative SMEs through the European Investment Fund. The bank's overall objective for the knowledge-based economy is to mobilise up to €50 million over the current decade. (ol)