Certara Corporation Acquires Quantitative Systems Pharmacology Consultancy Xenologiq; Professor Piet Van Der Graaf To Lead New QSP Organization

This transaction will strengthen Certara’s biosimulation capabilities, allowing it to link biological systems and disease processes

PRINCETON, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Certara®, the global biosimulation technology-enabled drug development company, today announced that it has acquired XenologiQ, a UK-based quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP) consultancy.

“The acquisition of XenologiQ signals the start of Certara’s commitment to become a world leader in the QSP space, furthering our objective of providing technology solutions that improve all aspects of the drug development process.”

“This transaction strengthens Certara’s modeling and simulation capabilities, increases its leadership in mechanistic pharmacology, and supports the company’s precision medicine vision,” said Certara Chief Executive Officer Edmundo Muniz, M.D, Ph.D. “It also gives us access to the emerging QSP technology, which integrates quantitative knowledge about a compound with the understanding of the mechanism of action for a specific disease. QSP focuses on the behavior of biological systems as a whole, versus the behavior of individual components.”

The XenologiQ team will join Certara’s Simcyp® division. The directors of XenoloqiQ will take up leadership positions within the Simcyp QSP organization. Piet van der Graaf, PharmD, PhD, (currently professor of systems pharmacology, Leiden University, Netherlands) will become vice president QSP, and Neil Benson, PhD, (formerly head of systems pharmacology, Pfizer, Sandwich, UK) will become head of QSP operations. Professor van der Graaf is a global leader in QSP, holds several patents in the field of target discovery, and has authored more than 100 scientific papers and book chapters in the area of quantitative and translational pharmacology. He is also Editor-in-Chief of CPT: Pharmacometrics & Systems Pharmacology, the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics’ journal.

Simcyp is the industry-leading mechanistic and physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling organization and counts the majority of the top-40 pharma companies as its clients and members of the Simcyp Consortium. Key academic institutions, and global regulators, including the US Food and Drug Administration, European Medicines Agency, and Japanese Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency are consortium affiliates.

QSP is an emerging biosimulation discipline that combines computational modeling and experimental methods to examine the mechanistic relationships between a drug, the biological system, and the disease process. QSP integrates quantitative drug data with knowledge of the drug’s mechanism of action. QSP modeling demonstrates, in a precise, predictive manner, how drugs modify cellular networks in space and time and how they impact and are impacted by human pathophysiology. Additionally, QSP facilitates the evaluation of complex, heterogeneous diseases such as cancer, immunological, metabolic and CNS diseases that require the combination of multiple therapies.

“Certara’s move into QSP is a natural extension of its leading position in biosimulation,” said Simcyp President Steve Toon, PhD. “The acquisition of XenologiQ signals the start of Certara’s commitment to become a world leader in the QSP space, furthering our objective of providing technology solutions that improve all aspects of the drug development process.”

“Combining PBPK with systems pharmacology is a natural fit. We see systems pharmacology models evolving alongside PBPK ones as new data becomes available to further inform crucial go/no-go decisions throughout the drug development continuum,” said Professor van der Graaf. “We look forward to joining Certara’s Simcyp team and increasing the depth of human disease biology included in its biosimulation modeling.”

Financial details about the transaction were not disclosed.

About XenologiQ

XenologiQ is a UK-based consulting company. Its mission is to productively implement state-of-the-art modeling and simulation in medical and life sciences research. Its value proposition is to achieve this via the optimal integration of experience, technical excellence and global talent. Its consultants have decades of experience in reducing modeling and simulation to effective practice in blue chip pharmaceutical R&D, in particular in pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic modeling and applied systems biology/systems pharmacology. For further information, visit www.xenologiq.com.

About Certara

Certara is a global biosimulation technology-enabled drug development company. Its customers include hundreds of biopharmaceutical companies around the globe, together with several regulatory agencies. Certara’s solutions, which span the discovery, preclinical and clinical stages of drug development, enable superior drug development and regulatory decision-making through biosimulation, thus increasing R&D productivity and commercial value. For more information, visit www.certara.com.