On April 18th, 2019, Dr. Swaroop, President and CEO of Rhizen Pharmaceuticals SA, Switzerland gave a talk titled “Targeted therapies to treat cancers – Rhizen’s approach”.
Dr. Swaroop discussed several hallmarks of cancer and the strategies and different pathways they target to find new therapeutics to fight various types of cancers at Rhizen pharmaceuticals. In addition, he mentioned several leads they developed and the stages of development they went through from design and synthesis of the drugs followed by preclinical screening and then moving forward to the clinical trials of these new candidate drugs. They currently have 6 drugs at different stages of clinical development (Phase 1 to Phase 3). Dr. Swaroop stressed on the collaborations they have with several academic institutions and hospitals in different countries (The United States, Europe, Australia, India, and China) and how these collaborative efforts helped them to develop the new anti-cancer agents quickly and efficiently.
College of pharmacy faculty members explored with Dr. Swaroop several possible collaborations and how the College of Pharmacy at Gulf Medical University could have fruitful collaborations in different common areas of interest with Rhizen pharmaceuticals as a partner from industry.
Dr. Ahmed Thabet, Chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences said: We are looking forward to Dr. Swaroop’s next visit in June where we will spend more time discussing detailed research projects between the college and Rhizen pharmaceuticals. This will serve to benefit the College, the industry and the community they serve.
Dean Sherief Khalifa commented: We envision the success of this collaborative initiative between our College of Pharmacy at GMU and Rhizen Pharmaceuticals as the first step towards realizing the vision of “Knowledge based Economy” in UAE.