31 March 2011

Selventa, the Cambridge biotech previously known as Genstruct Inc., has added to and expanded its strategic partnership with Pfizer Inc. to help spread knowledge about drug safety.

The deal calls for Pfizer and Selventa to co-fund the collaboration with an undisclosed amount. Under the deal, Pfizer and Selventa will “jointly create a publicly available version of Selventa’s BEL and BEL Framework for the scientific community at large to collectively capture, store, share and use that knowledge as users find appropriate for their research.” Pfizer will help Selventa create a community of BEL users and a portal that will be used by the community members and the research world at large “for any publicly available knowledge that have been published that the users want to share,” officials said.

In December, Selventa promoted then chief scientific officer David de Graaf to the roles of president and CEO. De Graaf had served as chief scientific officer of Selventa since being named to the position in June.

Founded in 2002 by Navin Chandra, Noubar Afeyan, and Keith Elliston, Selventachanged its named from Genstruct in November as part of a rebranding effort to showcase Selventa’s offerings in consulting, licensed software and strategic partnerships in the pharmaceutical, biotech and life sciences industries.

Source: MHT