Taros Chemicals celebrates 15 years
It was the 15th jubilee celebration of the company and its 10th anniversary in the pharmaceutical hub of Dortmund’s Bio-Medicine Centre. Besides the official inauguration of an additional 500 square meters of high-tech laboratory space, Taros had many more reasons to celebrate on 28th February, 2014, when they were honoured by visits from North-Rhine Westphalia’s Science and Innovations Minister, Svenja Schulze, the lord Mayor of Dortmund, Ullrich Sierau, and the Technology Centre’s Managing Director, Guido Baranowski, among 70 invited dignitaries. The guest list ranged from leading members of the European pharmaceutical, biotech and chemical industries to erstwhile scientific entrepreneurs, professors and leading government officials.
“I am absolutely delighted to celebrate our company’s 15th anniversary in the presence of our honorable guests, in conjunction with the opening of our new, high-tech, state-of-the-art laboratories in the emerging pharmaceutical and chemical hub of Dortmund’s Technology Centre. Our success should send a clear and strong message to decision makers in the state that investment in R& D oriented, mid-sized chemical and pharmaceutical companies in Germany at large, or NRW or even more specifically, Dortmund, is clearly worthwhile. Our fruitful bid for the European Lead Factory (ELF) project with a budget of almost 196 million euros, for the purpose of identifying innovative active ingredients for new drug development, goes to show the European Union’s commitment to R&D” sums up Dr. Dimitrios Tzalis, founder and CEO of Taros Chemicals.
The Minister for Science and Innovation, Svenja Schulze, congratulated the Taros Chemicals Team on their impressive and successful growth so far. “Taros Chemicals is a prime example of the transfer of science to practice; where a bridge between research and concrete solutions has been successfully built. This is most essential if we want to advance in bringing science to bear upon and improve human lives”.
Ullrich Sierau, Lord Mayor of Dortmund, added, “I warmly congratulate Taros Chemicals for its 15th anniversary. The company is an excellent example of Dortmund’s new economic landscape. Globally successful in high technology R&D; medium-sized; international corporation; yet deeply rooted in our city; these adjectives fit the description of Taros Chemicals very aptly. Moreover, it highlights the important role our city has played for the company. Through its many national and international customers and its enthusiasm for Dortmund, Taros Chemicals is a wonderful ambassador for our city. The wish the company continued success for the future.”
As part of the grand celebrations, Dr. Dimitrios Tzalis, Taros’ CEO, shared his company’s past, present and future vision with visiting European and international guests and customers. In his speech, he talked about the company’s humble beginnings, highlighting significant milestones, mentors and networks along its journey that have catapulted Taros to where it stands today. Dr. Tzalis also indicated that the particular relevance of the newly acquired laboratory space are the increased facilities now available to synthesize a targeted 40,000 chemical compounds by the year 2018! Added to that, he said that Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A) in cooperation with Taros, developed an award-winning and globally unique, fully-automatic, machine process layout, news of which was met with great interest from attending members of the scientific community.
The audience also heard speeches from other eminent leaders and consultants in the scientific community, namely, Prof. Dr. Axel Kleeman, independent consultant and former Board Member of ASTAMedica, Dr. Matthias Gottwald, Head of R&D Policy, Bayer Pharma, Dr. Siegfried Biolojan, Head of Life Science Centre, E & Y(former Ernst & Young), and Dr. Thomas Haas, Head of Science & Technology, Evonik Industries (Creavis).
About the European Lead Factory
The European Lead Factory, an international consortium of 30 organizations across Europe, participating in the form of a public-private partnership (PPP), was launched in 2013, as a novel working platform to significantly accelerate integrated drug research in Europe. It is supported through an umbrella organization called the “Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) “. The total project budget amounts to an impressive 196 million euros. Of this, 80 million euros comes from the „European Commission’s Seventh Framework Program for Research” (FP7) and 91 million euros will be contributed by participating member companies of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) until 2018. The remaining 25 million euros come from other means of non- EFPIA Consortium members. For NRW, and in particular for the pharmaceutical research hub in Dortmund, Taros Chemicals’ success in both winning the European Lead Factory prize and it’s leadership role in the chemistry consortium, is a momentous achievement, giving both the city of Dortmund and the state of NRW vast exposure and recognition for its favorable R&D climate in the European scientific community. Not only does this mean the inflow of a staggering 11 million euros into the city, which Taros and its partners plan to augment to an impressive 15 million euros, utilizing their own funds, but it also means the creation of highly skilled jobs in the project’s forefront. Since ELF’s inception in the company, Taros has added 15 new PhDs to its current team, and along with its local ELF partners, the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology (MPI) and Lead Discovery Center GmbH (LDC), plans to continue contributing to the expansion of Dortmund’s pharmaceutical hub throughout the project’s 5 year period.
About Taros Chemicals
Taros is a privately owned discovery chemistry company, working with global pharmaceutical, biotech and chemical companies since 1999. Alongside our performance chemicals and material science division, Taros’ drug discovery mission is to create drug candidates as potential new medicines. Taros has a strong scientific track record on many biomolecular targets in all main therapeutic areas and thereby adding considerable value to collaborations from target validation and hit identification to lead generation and optimization. Taros’ core expertise ranges from custom synthesis and process development to modern medicinal and computational chemistry, as well as compound library design and production.
Taros was heading the chemistry efforts of the EUR 196 million funded European Lead Factory (2013-2018) and is currently heading its EUR 36.5 million funded continuation (2019-2022). Moreover, Taros is deeply engaged in other research alliances like the EUR 11 million funded Drug Discovery Hub Dortmund.
Press Contact:
Youri R. Mesmoudi, Executive Vice President, e-mail: innovation |at| taros.de
Acknowledgement of support
This project has received funding from …
from the left: Ullrich Sierau (Lord Mayor City of Dortmund), Dr. Dimitrios Tzalis (Taros), Youri R. Mesmoudi (Taros), Svenja Schulze (Science and Innovations Minister NRW), Guido Baranowski (TZDO), Thomas Westphal (Economic Agency City of Dortmund), Dr. Alexander Piechot (Taros)
Drug Discovery
Taros’ international and multidisciplinary team has more than 180 years of pharmaceutical R&D experience. Collectively as a team, we worked on more than 120 biomolecular…
Material Science
We create performance chemicals to enhance new materials, plastics, coatings, dyes & inks, cosmetics, flavors and many more research and industrial applications…
