Percuros B.V., a Dutch biotech company, was founded in 2005 and develops biomarker assays for immunotherapy and oncology and to this day it specialises in designing both in vivo and in vitro assays for clients. The Company has a wealth of experience, with 10 R&D employees on board, who work on technologies than span isothermal PCR, gene expression assays, bioluminescence and fluorescence imaging, biosensors and nanoparticles. The Company has developed many gene expression reporter assays for pharma companies including specialised assays such as those based upon time domain (fluorescence lifetime) readouts to establish spatiotemporal reaction kinetics. Its state-of-art laboratories in Leiden and Enschede are fully equipped for multimodality in vivo imaging (CT, MRI and optical imaging) and in vitro assay development (optical analysis, time domain analysis, plate-based readers). Percuros is already an established European Union (EU) SME for which it already has in place a number of projects which have been funded by the EU, including the role of co-ordinator for one Marie Curie IAPP grant.

Dr Alan Chan is a molecular imaging specialist who has worked on in vivo time domain imaging (fluorescence lifetime) and readouts to establish spatiotemporal reaction kinetics. He is coordinator of several H2020 projects and has supervised 3 PhD students to completion successfully. Dr Alice Salvatori and Timo Schomann are specialised in the field of assay development, nanoparticles and all types of molecular imaging.

In CARTHAGO, Perc will introduce and apply novel imaging technologies in the in vivo models of osteoarthritis and intervertebral disc degeneration.