Actar – drug-like compounds with validated effect

Actar is a drug discovery company based on the Karolinska Institutet campus in Stockholm, Sweden. The company is a part of the Karolinska Institutet’s innovation system.

Actar explores innovative drug targets in multiple therapeutic areas resulting from academic research at top European institutions. Actar collaborates with the academic researchers to perform drug discovery based on these targets. Aiming to discover proprietary compounds with validated effect in relevant disease models, Actar brings its expertise in drug research and project management together with therapeutic area competency of the academic researchers. Drug-like compounds active against these targets are identified, characterized and divested, or further developed in collaboration with larger pharmaceutical companies.

Presently, Actar is performing discovery research in four therapeutic areas. Screening is being done in oncology (GLI, MYC, A3-3, PAK-4) and neuroscience. Lead finding and characterization is being done in inflammation (mPGES-1) and angiogenesis/age-related macular degeneration (VEGF).

Since Actar’s activities entail novel targets and technologies spanning multiple therapeutic areas, the objective for each project may vary. However, Actar’s commercial objective is usually to seek external funding, divest the project or enter into collaboration with a larger pharmaceutical company within 3-5 years. At this time, a team representing world-class competency around the target would be performing the research along with discovery expertise from Actar. Therefore, several means of collaboration may is possible, including having parts of the original research team continue to work within the framework of the collaboration.

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