New XSeed Labs Research Team Starts Activity in the U.S. in Collaboration With Boehringer Ingelheim

RIDGEFIELD, Conn., May 16, 2024 (Newswire.com) - XSeed Labs - a collaboration between BioMed X and Boehringer Ingelheim, announces the start of its first research team on the Boehringer Ingelheim campus in Ridgefield, Connecticut. This research team’s main objective is to develop complex, physiologically relevant disease models that deepen our understanding of dysfunctional wound healing and fibrosis. The end goal is to study fibrosis, drug delivery strategies, and drug safety in parallel, in an effort to bridge the gap between research and development to improve patient outcomes accurately and efficiently.

The new research team is led by Dr. Lorenzo Talà, Group Leader at XSeed Labs. “Due to insufficient understanding of the mechanisms driving their pathology, therapies to treat fibrotic diseases are limited. The aim of our research group is to develop physiologically relevant in vitro and in silico fibrosis models. By combining both approaches, we will interrogate disease mechanisms, identify drug delivery pathways, and assess drug safety in order to facilitate drug development toward resolving fibrotic tissues.”

Christian Tidona, Founder and Managing Director of the BioMed X Institute: “We are pleased that we could successfully translate the innovation model we established in Heidelberg and New Haven to work inside a major pharma research and development campus. We have a long history of successful collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim at our Heidelberg institute, and we are proud to extend this collaboration to their U.S. headquarters in Ridgefield, Connecticut.”

“We are committed to accelerating innovation across fibrotic diseases. This partnership allows us to harness top talent across the biomedical industry and leverage our leading research and development site in the U.S. to discover insights that could help transform the way we treat these diseases,” said Carine Boustany, PhD, U.S. Research Site Head and Global Head of Immunology and Respiratory Diseases Research, Boehringer Ingelheim. “In parallel, we will harness these innovative disease model systems to assess the safety of novel anti-fibrotic concepts, and identify better ways to deliver our molecules,” said Xiaorong He, PhD, U.S. Development Site Head and Global Head of Development Sciences, Boehringer Ingelheim.

"We are excited to start our first XSeed Labs team at Boehringer Ingelheim in Ridgefield. It is the beginning of a unique innovation model that promotes scientific exchange between major players in biomedical research," says Mark Johnston, CEO of BioMed X USA. 

About BioMed X and XSeed Labs

BioMed X is an independent research institute with sites in Heidelberg, Germany, New Haven, Connecticut, XSeed Labs in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and a worldwide network of partner locations. Together with our partners, we identify big biomedical research challenges and provide creative solutions by combining global crowdsourcing with local incubation of the world’s brightest early-career research talents. Each of the highly diverse research teams at BioMed X has access to state-of-the-art research infrastructure and is continuously guided by experienced mentors from academia and industry. At BioMed X, we combine the best of two worlds -- academia and industry -- and enable breakthrough innovation by making biomedical research more efficient, more agile, and more fun.

BioMed X started working with Boehringer Ingelheim in 2015 with a series of joint research projects hosted by the BioMed X Institute in Heidelberg, Germany. The new collaboration model - called XSeed Labs - entails an open innovation incubator embedded in the Boehringer Ingelheim Ridgefield campus in Connecticut, USA.

Source: BioMed X Institute & XSeed Labs