This new collaboration comes from a call from AlmirallShare, the company's open innovation platform, to find innovative therapies for skin diseases.

Almirall and the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) are joining forces to develop and characterize novel preclinical models that will help identify new treatments for non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC).

This partnership, led by Almirall's investigators Dr. Amadeu Gavaldà and Dr. Cristina Gutiérrez, will merge the expertise of Luciano Di Croce (CRG group leader and ICREA Research Professor) and his team with Almirall’s knowledge in medical dermatology. Together, they will establish experimental models that enable the identification and/or validation of new therapeutic approaches and the evaluation of new drugs for these diseases.

This new research collaboration arises from the call for proposals by AlmirallShare, the company's open platform dedicated to discovering therapies for skin diseases. This platform was created in 2017 to make dermatological research collaborations easier and speed up the development of new skin condition treatments. The collaboration with CRG represents another milestone in this endeavor and builds upon the eight established partnerships based on models, targets, and new therapies for dermatological diseases such as hidradenitis suppurativa.

“At Almirall, we regularly identify external collaborations that can leverage and complement our internal capabilities and research. This collaboration with CRG brings us closer to our Noble Purpose of delivering world-class solutions that make a difference in patients' lives,” says  Karl Ziegelbauer, Ph.D., Almirall S.A.’s Chief Scientific Officer, in a news release. "It also reaffirms the success of our open innovation platform AlmirallShare as a key tool for building strategic partnerships.”

“NMSC is not an aggressive cancer, meaning it has been historically difficult to model this disease in the lab. However, important technological advances combined with multiple 'omics’ approaches allow now to create truly functional scientific models for this skin cancer. Thus, it is an exciting opportunity to collaborate with Almirall and make important advances in studying one of the most frequent types of cancer," adds Prof. Di Croce.