Almirall, a global biopharmaceutical company focused on skin health, today announced anagreement with ZeClinics, a Contract Research Organization (CRO) specialized in zebrafish, to be based at Almirall's R&D centre. Both companies are CataloniaBio & HealthTech members. With this agreement, Almirall reinforces its aim to transform its R&D centre located in Sant Feliu de Llobregat into a uniquely collaborative environment where researchers from biotech companies, start-ups, academia, and other scientist meet with Almirall’s team to enhance research success.

Throught he agreement, ZeClinics will be able to leverage Almirall's state-of-the-art R&D facilities to keep advancing its innovative scientific pipeline and providing customized services to help their clients with disease modelling, target discovery and drug development. In this way, ZeClinics’ mission is to accelerate research by challenging the discovery process, with a model that combines the advantages of zebrafish with lab automation and artificial intelligence.

"Our agreement with ZeClinics highlights our commitment to enabling scientific innovation that improves people's lives," said Karl Ziegelbauer, Ph.D., Almirall S.A.’s Chief Scientific Officer. Through these collaborations with biotech companies and academia, and the opening of our R&D centre, we reinforce our objective to create acutting-edge research ecosystem."

“Being part of such an innovative research hub gives us the opportunity to establish synergies, both in terms of knowledge and advanced technologies,” commented Simone Calzolari, ZeClinics’ Chief Executive Officer. “It is a unique opportunity for ZeClinics to continue growing and providing higher-quality science to our clients.”

The R&D centre in Sant Feliu de Llobregat (Barcelona, Spain), has 7,400 squaremetres of fully equipped laboratories and production area.