Zen-Bio, a Research Triangle Park firm that received $235,000 in loans from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center after forming in 1995, has established a research collaboration with the Pennington Biomedical Research Center (PBRC), a campus of the Louisiana State University System.
The collaboration is to identify natural compounds for the prevention and treatment of metabolic disease and obesity. The initial phase of the program includes screening thousands of botanical extracts for their beneficial effects on human abdominal fat cells and adult stem cells.
The Botanical Research Center at PBRC, a collaborative center between PBRC and the Center of Agriculture and the Environment of Rutgers University, provides a unique library of botanical extracts. Researchers from Zen-Bio will screen the compounds with their human fat-derived stem cell screening system to discover natural therapeutics for obesity and diabetes.
"This program gives us a unique opportunity to identify natural products that impact the function of human abdominal fat and the progression of metabolic disease," said Ben Buehrer, vice president of Zen-Bio. "Both Zen-Bio and PBRC recognize the critical molecular differences between non-human and human tissue, and are diving right into human primary cell screening to eliminate costly artifacts. We also realize subcutaneous and abdominal fat have different roles in the progression of metabolic disease and are focusing on abdominal fat for that reason."
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