Bayer HealthCare Commemorates Fourth Anniversary of its Master Agreement with University of California, San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 8, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Bayer HealthCare today announced three research collaborations established under its master agreement with University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Since the launch of the master agreement in 2011, Bayer HealthCare has formed collaborative research projects with UCSF's Charles Craik, Ph.D., Andrej Sali, Ph.D. and Robert Stroud, Ph.D. The focus of these collaborations between UCSF and Bayer HealthCare is to expedite the identification of potential therapeutic targets and development of drug discovery tools.

Bayer has established research projects with the following UCSF scientists:

• Charles Craik, Ph.D., professor at UCSF and Bayer HealthCare scientists are examining the application of protease substrate profiling libraries for the identification of novel drug targets for NETosis in inflammatory and immune disorders.
• Andrej Sali, Ph.D., professor at UCSF and Bayer HealthCare researchers are using computational modelling to predict and optimize the immunogenicity of therapeutic proteins, such as the therapies used to treat hemophilia A.
• Robert Stroud, Ph.D., head of UCSF's Membrane Protein Expression Center is working with Bayer HealthCare to express and purify a key metabolic transporter, focused on the field of oncology.

These three research collaborations were established with the goal to facilitate an efficient and productive pathway to accelerate research progress in this public-private agreement.

"On the fourth anniversary of this collaboration with UCSF, the joint efforts of Bayer's scientists and Dr. Craik, Dr. Sali and Dr. Stroud have demonstrated how research can be extremely productive when top scientists from academia and industry collaborate closely," said Christopher Haskell, Ph.D., head of the U.S. Science Hub at Bayer HealthCare. "Even in such a short period of time, our collaboration with Dr. Craik has resulted in a published paper in 2013, with other research discoveries on the horizon. We are excited to continue our collaboration with top scientists at UCSF."

About Bayer HealthCare
The Bayer Group is a global enterprise with core competencies in the fields of health care, agriculture and high-tech materials. Bayer HealthCare, a subgroup of Bayer AG with annual sales of EUR 18.9 billion (2013), is one of the world's leading, innovative companies in the healthcare and medical products industry and is based in Leverkusen, Germany. Bayer HealthCare combines the global activities of the Animal Health, Consumer Care, Medical Care and Pharmaceuticals divisions. Bayer HealthCare's aim is to discover, develop, manufacture and market products that will improve human and animal health worldwide. Bayer HealthCare has a global workforce of 56,000 employees (Dec 31, 2013) and is represented in more than 100 countries. More information is available at www.healthcare.bayer.com.

About Bayer in the Bay Area
Bayer HealthCare is the third largest biotech employer in the Bay Area and a global leader in the research, development and manufacturing of biotechnology and specialty pharmaceutical therapies that improve human health. Bayer HealthCare's presence on the U.S. West Coast includes a manufacturing facility in Berkeley and its U.S. research hub, the U.S. Innovation Center in San Francisco. 

© 2015 Bayer HealthCare
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Forward-Looking Statements
This release may contain forward-looking statements based on current assumptions and forecasts made by Bayer Group or subgroup management. Various known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors could lead to material differences between the actual future results, financial situation, development or performance of the company and the estimates given here. These factors include those discussed in Bayer's public reports which are available on the Bayer website at www.bayer.com. The company assumes no liability whatsoever to update these forward-looking statements or to conform them to future events or developments.

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