Archive for the ‘Grants and Awards’ Category
Kidney cancer research grant a NZ first
Last Updated on Wednesday, 5 May 2010 10:39 Written by Editor Wednesday, 5 May 2010 10:39
Press Release: University of Auckland Media Release
Wednesday 16 December 2009
The Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre at The University of Auckland
Kidney cancer research grant a NZ first
University of Auckland chemist Associate Professor Michael Hay has become the first New Zealand scientist to receive a grant from a leading international charity for funding cancer research.
Dr Hay and his team at the University’s Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre will use the ₤137,000 ($NZ 290,000) grant from the UK-based Association for International Cancer Research (AICR) to identify molecular targets in kidney cancer tumours that will help them design more effective anticancer drugs.
This research will expand on Dr Hay and his colleague Dr Jack Flanagan’s recent work designing new drugs for kidney cancer using computers, a project funded by the Maurice Wilkins Centre for Molecular Biodiscovery. Both Dr Hay and Dr Flanagan are associate investigators at the centre.
Dr Hay says although not one of the most common cancers, kidney cancers often don’t respond to standard chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and that advanced kidney cancer has an extremely poor prognosis.
“Cancer is caused by changes to either the structure or activity of key genes that control how cells function. In many kidney cancers, a gene called the von Hippel Lindau gene is switched off. Without this gene, a relatively benign tumour can turn into a more aggressive, invasive tumour.â€
Dr Hay and colleagues at Stanford University have recently discovered two new classes of molecules that can selectively kill kidney cancer cells that have this particular gene turned off, either by getting the cells to “eat themselves†or by cutting off their food supply. However, the exact interactions between these molecules and their protein targets are not yet known.
“With this grant we’ll use advanced 3D computer modelling techniques to help us identify these targets, and show how potential drugs for treating kidney cancers might interact with their target molecules,†says Dr Hay.
Dr Flanagan says this new method of targeted drug discovery, called “virtual screeningâ€, selects potential drug leads suited to a specific target molecule from millions of compounds. “It’s basically a way to find the needle in the haystack.â€
AICR Scientific Advisor Dr Mark Matfield says the charity supports only the very best applications, which it hopes will ultimately lead to powerful new treatments for cancer. “This is the first time we have given a grant to a scientist in New Zealand, and we believe this innovative work could produce significant results.â€
The project is supported by the Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre and the Maurice Wilkins Centre. It involves collaboration with the Department of Radiation Biology at the Stanford University School of Medicine in the US and is due to begin in April 2010.
Source: scoop.co.nz
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University of California, San Francisco, Researcher Receives ASBMB-Merck Award
Last Updated on Thursday, 28 January 2010 06:25 Written by Editor Thursday, 28 January 2010 06:25
Bethesda, MD, December 12, 2009 –(PR.com)– James A. Wells, professor and chairman of the department pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco, and director of UCSF’s small molecule discovery center, has been named the winner of the 2010 American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology-Merck Award for his pioneering studies in the field of protein engineering.
Wells, who also serves on the ASBMB Council, will present an award lecture, titled “Probing and Controlling Cellular Remodeling Enzymes,” at 2:15 p.m. Monday, April 26, at the 2010 annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif.
Wells integrates multiple disciplines, including biophysics, cell biology, chemical biology, molecular biology, enzymology and proteomics, to design small molecules and proteins that can selectively activate or inhibit cellular processes such as differentiation and apoptosis. Through these efforts, Wells hopes to better understand how signaling events drive responses, such as cell growth and death, and perhaps discover new drugs to treat diseases like cancer.
Along the way, Wells has developed numerous innovative methodologies to improve protein engineering, molecular screening and pharmaceutical chemistry, including a disulfide-based protein-trapping technology, substrate-assisted catalysis and N-terminomics.
“[Wells] is an exciting and highly creative scientist,” noted Ian A. Wilson, professor of structural biology at The Scripps Research Institute, “and these methods that he has pioneered have been invaluable to countless researchers in a multitude of fields.”
“His unbridled enthusiasm is infectious and ensures his lab is fully regaled with a plethora of ideas,” Wilson continued, “so they can unleash their individual talents to further progress drug discovery, biochemical mechanisms, protein function and understanding of key cellular events that impact human health.”
Wells’ impressive expertise in protein engineering stems from a long and renowned career in the pharmaceutical industry. Before joining UCSF, Wells spent nearly two decades at Genentech Inc., where he was a founding scientist of its protein engineering department. He later founded and served as president and chief scientific officer of Sunesis Pharmaceuticals and helped invent a novel drug-discovery platform called Tethering, which efficiently screens molecules to identify the most potent compounds that block specific protein action.
Prior to that, Wells received his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1973 and his doctorate in biochemistry from Washington State University in 1979. He also took on postdoctoral fellowships at both Washington State University and the Stanford University School of Medicine before joining Genentech in 1982.
his career, Wells has made enormous contributions to our understanding of enzyme mechanisms, allostery, protein plasticity, protein-protein interfaces, small molecule discovery, hormone receptor signaling, molecular recognition, protease signaling and apoptosis,” said Molecular and Cellular Proteomics co-editor Alma Burlingame, who is also a professor of chemistry and pharmaceutical chemistry at UCSF. “Not only has his science led to fundamental discoveries, it also produced new products in both the industrial enzyme and pharmaceutical sectors.”
The ASBMB-Merck Award, presented annually, recognizes outstanding research contributions in the fields of biochemistry and molecular biology.
Source: pr.com
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Professor Receives Grant to Develop More Rapid Technology For Screening Blood Samples
Last Updated on Tuesday, 15 December 2009 03:29 Written by Editor Tuesday, 15 December 2009 03:29
AUSTIN, Texas — Dr. Jennifer Brodbelt, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at The University of Texas at Austin, has received a $734,068 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a new method for rapidly screening blood samples for biomarkers.
Biomarkers are small molecules that indicate the presence of a particular physiological condition, typically a disease. The new method, if successful, could prove useful not just for identifying markers of specific diseases such as cancer or heart disease, but for discovering broader metabolic patterns correlated with conditions such as aging or obesity.
“There are technologies right now that are very effective at separating and analyzing the different compounds in a blood sample, but they tend to be relatively slow,” says Brodbelt, the principal investigator of the grant. “It makes it very hard to do analyses of lots of samples. What we’re developing is a chip-based method, where entire classes of compounds are captured on the chips and then all the compounds are released and analyzed by mass spectrometry in just a few seconds.”
Although the technology, if successful, should be useful in searching for biomarkers in all sorts of conditions, Brodbelt and her collaborators from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, Drs. Lynn and Frank Guziec, are focusing on patterns that correlate with aging.
“We’re trying to develop maps that can correlate the progression of aging with metabolites that might be circulating in your blood,” says Brodbelt. “These could be small molecules that increase in quantity as you age, or actually change in composition as one ages.”
The new method, says Brodbelt, involves three basic stages.
The first stage is the coating of different regions of a mesh chip with a variety of “capture agents,” which chemically bind to specific compounds in a blood sample. A burst from an ultraviolet light then severs the chemical bonds between the chip and the captured substances. Then an electrospray, which is similar to a solvent aerosol spray, shoots through the mesh chip and transfers the different compounds into the mass spectrometer for analysis.
By analyzing the mass spectrometric data, says Brodbelt, scientists should be able to measure the presence and quantity of different compounds, and to do so on a scale, and with a speed, that wasn’t possible before.
“The payoff could be big,” she says. “It’s a different strategy than what might be pursued by molecular biologists or biochemists. They’ll often focus on studying one or two proteins at a time, and develop a really deep understanding of those proteins. We’re looking for the more generalized profile, and we may notice some patterns that weren’t apparent to them.
“There are so many other areas where you’d want to do profiling. It might involve looking for pesticides as part of an environmental study, or doing protein-related work or drug profiling work. If this approach is successful, I imagine other groups will try to develop these chips as well.”
Brodbelt’s grant, which is being funded as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) government stimulus package, is a “Challenge Grant,” meant to encourage high-risk, high-reward research projects that may produce results quickly.
This is the second NIH grant in two years that Brodbelt and the Guziecs have received. In 2008, the collaborating groups received a four-year, $1,113,615 grant to evaluate an innovative technique that could assess the anti-cancer activity of new compounds.
For more information, contact: Jennifer Brodbelt, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, 512-471-0028.
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Trana Discovery and Southern Research Institute Find Bioactive HIV Antiviral Compounds: NIAID contracts additional $700,000 to screen 300,000 more compounds for HIV inhibition
Last Updated on Wednesday, 2 December 2009 01:50 Written by Editor Wednesday, 2 December 2009 01:50
Trana Discovery and Southern Research Institute Find Bioactive HIV Antiviral Compounds: NIAID contracts additional $700,000 to screen 300,000 more compounds for HIV inhibition
PRNewswire – October 28, 2009
CARY, N.C. and BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Oct. 28 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Trana Discovery, Inc., an infectious disease drug discovery technology company, and Southern Research Institute, a not-for-profit contract research organization conducting basic and applied preclinical drug research, today announced that several bioactive hits from a set of 15,000 diverse small molecule compounds screened under contract with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) exhibit antiviral activity against HIV-1 infected cells. Among the compounds tested at Southern Research using the Trana HIV 201 High-Throughput Screening (HTS) assay, 16 compounds demonstrated inhibition of HIV replication in infected human cells and several of these compounds were judged to be “potentially druggable.”
The screening assay used to identify the compounds is based on the premise that HIV-1 has evolved to use tRNALys3 as a primer for initiation of reverse transcription. Therefore, the interaction between tRNALys3 and viral genomic RNA represents a potential novel target for HIV-1 drug development. The biochemical assay to identify inhibitors of the interaction between tRNALys3 and HIV-1 genomic RNA was developed by Trana and transferred to Southern Research for high-throughput screening. Southern Research converted the assay to a homogeneous amplified luminescent proximity assay using AlphaScreen(R) reagents from PerkinElmer.
During this initial pilot study, 164 compounds were identified from the diversity set library as hits. Of these hits, 136 were retested in dose-response against HIV-1IIIB replication in a CEM-SS cytoprotection assay. Sixteen of this last group of compounds inhibited HIV-1 replication.
“These data indicate that the TRANA Discovery assay has identified a number of compounds with modest antiviral activity against HIV-1,” said Roger Ptak, Co-Principal Investigator, Southern Research Institute, in his report to the Division of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (DAIDS) within NIAID. “Additional testing of compounds with similar structures, as well as broader HTS, should lead to the identification of lead compounds that inhibit HIV-1 replication through the novel mechanism of inhibiting the interaction between tRNALys3 and viral genomic RNA.”
As a result of this successful pilot study, DAIDS has approved $700,000 of additional funding for the contract with Southern Research Institute in order to screen an additional 300,000 compounds and to conduct confirmatory testing of selected lead compounds. Lead candidates (or analogs) identified through this screening will be pursued by Trana Discovery for development and to secure the property rights and patents as deemed appropriate.
Toward that end, Trana Discovery is seeking organizations interested in licensing identified leads or that hold diverse collections of compounds or compounds with known bioactivity against HIV but unknown mechanism of action to identify candidates for drug development.
The use of high-throughput screening (HTS) assays developed by Trana Discovery can provide licensing opportunities for exclusive rights to new drug classes and reduce the cost and time for drug discovery.
“We are excited about the results from the initial screening efforts and for the confidence exhibited by the NIAID/DAIDS by this additional funding commitment,” said Steve Peterson, CEO of Trana Discovery. “We remain very optimistic that the use of our HIV assay will lead to new antivirals for the treatment of this disease.”
NIAID conducts and supports research to study the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases, and to develop better means of preventing, diagnosing and treating these illnesses. The NIAID is a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research. Work for this project was performed under the DAIDS, NIAID contract N01-AI-70042; Roger Miller, Project Officer.
The HTS screening was conducted at the Southern Research High-Throughput Screening Center which consists of a suite of laboratories designed for efficient screening of large compound libraries and has the capacity for screening a wide variety of assay types. The Trana Discovery assay was recently validated in a 1536 well format, which increases the screening capabilities to over 100,000 compounds per day.
Organizations interested in licensing the Trana HIV 201 assay should contact Trana at info@tranadiscovery.com or by calling 866-390-3452 (toll free) or +1-919-342-6192. Parties interested in screening compounds using this assay at Southern Research Institute facilities may contact David Harris at d.harris@southernresearch.org or call +1-800-967-6774.
About Trana Discovery, Inc.
Trana Discovery, an anti-infective drug discovery technology company, helps its partners find new classes of drugs for the treatment of serious bacterial, viral, and fungal infectious diseases. Our proprietary assays identify compounds that work through a unique mechanism of action: inhibition of the target pathogen’s ability to use transfer RNA (tRNA) essential for propagation. The use of high-throughput screening assays developed by Trana Discovery will reduce the cost and time for drug discovery. Our assays provide licensing opportunities for exclusive rights to new drug classes. Trana Discovery has licensed the patented technology emanating from 20 years of research conducted at North Carolina State University, and holds patents that expand on this core technology and its use in high throughput screening. The company is located in Cary, North Carolina. For more information, please visit www.tranadiscovery.com.
About Southern Research Institute
Southern Research Institute is a nonprofit 501(c)3 scientific research organization that conducts preclinical drug discovery and development, and advanced engineering research in materials, systems development, environment and energy. Our more than 550 scientific and engineering team members support clients and partners in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, defense, aerospace, environmental and energy industries. Southern Research is headquartered in Birmingham, Ala., with facilities in Wilsonville, Ala., Anniston, Ala., Frederick, Md., and Durham, NC and offices in New Orleans, La., Washington, DC and Kiev, Ukraine. For more information about Southern Research and its capabilities and accomplishments, visit www.SouthernResearch.org.
*Bilbille Y, et al. Vendeix Nucleic Acids Res. 2009 Jun;37(10):3342-53. Epub 2009 Mar 26. See www.tranadiscovery.com for complete reference.
Source: Southern Research Institute
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DiscoveryBioMed Awarded $300,000 NIH Grant for Cystic Fibrosis Drug Research and Development
Last Updated on Wednesday, 2 December 2009 01:35 Written by Editor Wednesday, 2 December 2009 01:35
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – (Business Wire) DiscoveryBioMed, Inc. (DBM) today announced that it has been awarded a Phase 1 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The $308,000 grant will be used to advance certain small molecule drug discovery programs designed to correct the genetic mutation most common to cystic fibrosis (CF). “SBIR funding is an essential part of DiscoveryBioMed’s ability to provide our academic clients with cost-effective access to our world-class drug discovery engine,†said Dr. Erik Schwiebert, Chief Executive Officer of DiscoveryBioMed. “By screening our test drugs on DBM’s proprietary disease-relevant human cell backgrounds, our clients are able to facilitate their basic research, bringing new therapies closer to patients. The SBIR grant announced today is an example of this strategy in action.â€
Dr. Schwiebert continued, “We are particularly pleased that the NIH has chosen to provide funding for this important drug discovery program and we are proud to be partnered with UAB’s Gregory Fleming James Cystic Fibrosis Research Center in the pursuit of new clinical treatments for Cystic Fibrosis.â€
To date, DiscoveryBioMed, along with partners, James Collawn, Ph.D. and Zsuzsa Bebok, M.D., have screened approximately 25,000 compounds as part of this program. As a result of the SBIR award announced today, the team will be able to screen 50,000-70,000 additional compounds. In addition, the collaboration has already yielded the discovery and validation of a panel of 5 lead corrector compounds with nanomolar potency and 10-20 fold greater potency that any existing corrector drugs. Medicinal chemistry derivatives are currently being synthesized from the most potent lead compound from a family of drugs that had common molecular structure. Patent protection is in its final stages with work being facilitated by the UAB Research Foundation.
DBM and UAB investigators have mutual rights to existing and future lead compounds going forward and have contributed equally to the partnership.
“We are extremely pleased to be working with DiscoveryBioMed. Their exceptional technology and excellent small molecule screening library make them an ideal partner for this program, said James F. Collawn, Ph.D., Professor of Cell Biology at UAB. “We look forward to a continued and active scientific collaboration with DiscoveryBioMed.â€
Dr. Collawn continued, “The SBIR grant announced today is a meaningful endorsement of our efforts investigating novel approaches to the development of therapies for the treatment of patients with CF. We believe the human airway epithelial cell model, which was acquired and licensed by DiscoveryBioMed, expressing the mutant CFTR from an endogenous gene is currently the best model for studies of this type. The funds made available through the SBIR grant will allow us to explore new ideas regarding mutant CFTR rescue and may lead to treatment alternatives for CF patients in the near future.â€
The grant announced today is the second to be awarded to DBM this year. The previous award, announced in September, was a Phase 2 SBIR grant to continue research into the discovery and development of small molecules to alleviate multiple chronic human diseases.
About DiscoveryBioMed, Inc.
DiscoveryBioMed, Inc. is a life sciences and biotechnology company that engages in R&D and services work in cell engineering and production and cell-based drug discovery. The company is located within Innovation Depot in Birmingham. Using physiologically relevant cell culture models preferably derived from normal and diseased adult human cells and tissues, it focuses on finding therapeutic compounds for a variety of human diseases. It also applies this custom human cell-based approach to its “fee-for-service†support to researchers in allied areas and currently serves clients both locally in Alabama as well as in 11 other states in the US currently. For more information, visit the DBM website at www.discoverybiomed.com.
Discovery BioMed, Inc.
Erik Schwiebert, Ph.D., 205-307-6535 x 1
erik@discoverybiomed.com
or
Red Mountain Communications
Jonathan M. Nugent, 205-566-3026
jnugent@redmtncom.com
Source: earthtimes.org
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Scripps Researchers Win $3.9M NIH Grant for Protein Ligand Screening Tech
Last Updated on Monday, 30 November 2009 01:53 Written by Editor Monday, 30 November 2009 01:53
The grant, awarded through NIH’s recently introduced Roadmap Transformative grant program, will be shared by the laboratories of Tom Kodadek, a professor of chemistry and cancer biology at Scripps’ Jupiter, Fla., campus, and Benjamin Cravatt, professor and chair of chemical physiology at Scripps’ La Jolla, Calif., laboratories.
The research project will combine a peptoid library synthesis and screening platform developed in the Kodadek laboratory with an activity-based protein profiling system developed in the Cravatt laboratory, Scripps said.
The Kodadek peptoid platform involves creating large libraries of peptoids – synthetic molecules that are similar to peptides – displayed on microscopic beads and screened against fluorescently tagged proteins that signal highly affinitive and selective ligand binding. The Cravatt laboratory’s protein-profiling system allows scientists to identify protein classes based on their activity by attaching a single label or probe to proteins from a particular subset of the proteome, allowing access to so-called low-abundance proteins.
Scripps said that combining the technologies will enable screening of massive peptoid libraries on the order of 1 million to 10 million synthetic compounds in parallel, thereby greatly increasing the rate of ligand discovery.
“By combining our technologies, we will have a streamlined, unbiased way to identify high-quality protein ligands, [which] will give us access to a large part of the proteome that others can’t study right now because current technology is inadequate,” Cravatt said in a statement.
Source: Genomeweb
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ERGONEX Pharma receives Frost & Sullivan’s European Orphan Diseases Entrepreneurial Company Award 2009
Last Updated on Thursday, 22 October 2009 12:02 Written by Editor Thursday, 22 October 2009 12:02
Appenzell, Switzerland, October 19, 2009 / b3c newswire / – ERGONEX Pharma received one of the prestigious ‘European Orphan Diseases Entrepreneurial Company Award’ on the occasion of Frost & Sullivan’s ’2009 Excellence in Healthcare Awards Banquet,’ held in London on 8th October 2009. The highly competitive award was presented to ERGONEX Pharma in recognition of the company’s innovative therapeutic concept, its impressive display of technological know-how and targeted vision.
ERGONEX Pharma is focused on the clinical development and commercialisation of Terguride for the treatment of distinct orphan diseases. Terguride is currently being evaluated for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) in a Phase II trial in Europe and headline results are expected in 2010.
Dr. Rudolf Reiter, CEO of ERGONEX Pharma comments: “This award comes at an exciting and challenging time for ERGONEX Pharma. I see it as recognition of the vision, the commitment and work of the company, which would not have been possible without the continued support, expertise and out-of-the-box thinking of our partners in the on-going clinical trial. We believe that Terguride has the potential to contribute a new quality to emerging combination therapies for patients, who do not tolerate, have become resistant to or are insufficiently controlled by current treatment options in PAH.â€
The Frost & Sullivan Healthcare Awards Banquet honours Europe’s best healthcare companies for their achievements over the course of this year. Frost & Sullivan’s highly competitive awards recognise companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development.
About Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension
Pulmonary arterial hypertension is a disorder of the blood vessels in the lung, in which the pressure in large blood vessel rises above normal. Walls of the blood vessels are thickened and hardened, becoming less elastic. Hence, the decrease in lumen leads to increases in pressure. Patients with PAH suffer from extreme shortness of breath as the heart struggles to pump against these high pressures causing such patients to ultimately die of heart failure.
About Terguride
Terguride acts as a potent antagonist on 5-HT2B and 5-HT2A receptors: It has anti-proliferative and anti-fibrotic activities and drives reverse remodelling processes. Serotonin is a signal molecule in the body with many functions. In the blood vessel walls of the lung, it stimulates proliferation of smooth muscle cells and narrowing of the blood vessels, which has been implicated in PAH. Furthermore, trophic effects of serotonin on the heart contribute to right heart hypertrophy and progression towards heart failure. Terguride is approved in Japan for hyperprolactinemia acting as a partial dopamine agonist on the pituitary gland.
About ERGONEX Pharma – www.ergonex.com
ERGONEX Pharma is a pharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercialising well-tolerated and effective products for novel and typically underserved indications. This is being achieved by forging collaborations with commercial and academic partners with expertise in the field of interest and through outsourcing activities to service providers.
Contact
ERGONEX Pharma GmbH
Ruetistr. 20
CH-9050 Appenzell
Switzerland
Phone: +41 71 788 4065
E-mail: info@ergonex.com
www.ergonex.com
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Scripps Research scientists awarded $3.9 million grant to develop new compound screening platform
Last Updated on Tuesday, 20 October 2009 10:04 Written by Editor Tuesday, 20 October 2009 10:04
Bicoastal effort could help revolutionize the search for new therapies
La Jolla, CA, and Jupiter, FL, October 5, 2009 –A pair of scientists from The Scripps Research Institute, one on each coast, has been awarded a five-year $3.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a new technology to accelerate the search for new protein ligands – compounds that bind to proteins and alter their function.
Current screening technology, which is slow and expensive, has caused what the NIH calls a “major bottleneck” in the search for these basic tools that are key for the broader study of biological processes and that lay the groundwork for development of most drugs.
The grant, awarded as part of the NIH’s new Roadmap Transformative R01 Program, will be shared between the laboratories of Tom Kodadek, Ph.D., a professor in the Scripps Research Departments of Chemistry and Cancer Biology in Jupiter, Florida, and Benjamin Cravatt III, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Chemical Physiology and member of The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology and Helen L. Dorris Child and Adolescent Neuro-Psychiatric Disorder Institute at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California.
“Ben and I are extremely pleased to win this highly competitive award and to be among the first selected for the new Transformative Grant program from the NIH,” Kodadek said. “This is a perfect example of the tremendous collaborative possibilities available within Scripps Research. We worked on the proposal together and the fact that we’re both part of the same national institution will make the work that much easier as we move ahead.”
Cravatt added, “This project is a good reflection of what those of us at Scripps Research in La Jolla and in Florida are trying to accomplish – fostering collaborative interaction and working on complimentary research projects. This will help cement the strong working relationship between our two campuses.”
The NIH Roadmap Transformative R01 (T-R01) Program awards were launched this year to support exceptionally innovative, high risk, original, and/or unconventional research projects that have the potential to create or overturn fundamental scientific paradigms.
“The appeal of the Pioneer, New Innovator, and now the T-R01 programs, is that investigators are encouraged to challenge the status quo with innovative ideas, while being given the necessary resources to test them,” said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. “The fact that we continue to receive such strong proposals for funding through the programs reflects the wealth of creative ideas in science today.”
Two Innovative Methods and a Cab Ride
The new Scripps Research project will combine two separate technologies from each laboratory – a peptoid library synthesis and screening platform developed in the Kodadek laboratory and an activity-based protein profiling system developed in the Cravatt laboratory.
Kodadek’s screening platform involves the creation of vast libraries of peptoids (peptoids are synthetic molecules that are similar to peptides, compounds that when joined together make up proteins) displayed on microscopic beads that are screened against fluorescently tagged proteins that light up after binding with a high affinity, highly selective ligand.
“Our screening technology simulates the cellular environment,” Kodadek said, “because the tagged proteins, which represent only a small fraction of the total, are mixed in with un-tagged competitors. There is a specificity filter built into the process from the beginning.”
The Cravatt Laboratory has pioneered the Activity-Based Protein Profiling technology, which allows scientists to identify protein classes based on their activity. The basic technology attaches a single label or probe to proteins from a particular subset of the proteome, which allows access to what are considered low abundance proteins and makes it ideal for massive parallel screening experiments. So far, Activity-Based Protein Profiling probes have been developed for more than a dozen distinct enzyme classes.
Cravatt’s technology makes it possible to target what he calls “interesting classes of proteins” but in a highly parallel fashion – hundreds of screens at a time of those multi- million member peptoid libraries. Although both scientists have known one another for some time, many of the details of the collaboration were worked out on a cab ride from England’s Heathrow airport to London last summer.
“Tom and I had an editorial board meeting in London, and shared a cab from the airport,” Cravatt said. “The fact that Tom had recently joined Scripps Florida helped get us energized about the project.”
“It’s true,” Kodadek added. “The ideas behind the grant proposal just popped out of that ride.”
A Transformational Marriage
The combination of the Kodadek and Cravatt advanced technologies will allow the screening of massive peptoid libraries (1-10 million synthetic compounds) in parallel fashion, a novel strategy that the scientists predict will increase the rate of ligand discovery by several hundred times over current methods.
“The gist of our proposal is quite simply marrying these two beautifully worked out technologies,” Kodadek said. “We have a good track record on both sides, plus we’re building off these innovative platforms, so if this works, and I’m certain it will, it will definitely be transformational.”
That transformation, when it comes, should result in more lead drug candidates, Kodadek said, because while the scientists’ success rate has been lower than those using current high throughput screening technology, the quality of the ligands identified has been significantly better. Some of this is due to the fact that simple synthetic compounds like peptoids have many advantages over other ligands such as antibodies. They can be modified easily for attachment to surfaces and can be produced in relatively large amounts at lower cost and rather quickly – a multi-million member peptoid library, for example, can be created in around three days.
“The way most science works today,” Cravatt said, “is that researchers tend to huddle around those areas where there are tools available. By combining our technologies, we will have a streamlined, unbiased way to identify high quality protein ligands and that will give us access to a large part of the proteome that others can’t study right now because the current technology is inadequate.”
About The Scripps Research Institute
The Scripps Research Institute is one of the world’s largest independent, non-profit biomedical research organizations, at the forefront of basic biomedical science that seeks to comprehend the most fundamental processes of life. Scripps Research is internationally recognized for its discoveries in immunology, molecular and cellular biology, chemistry, neurosciences, autoimmune, cardiovascular, and infectious diseases, and synthetic vaccine development. Established in its current configuration in 1961, it employs approximately 3,000 scientists, postdoctoral fellows, scientific and other technicians, doctoral degree graduate students, and administrative and technical support personnel. Scripps Research is headquartered in La Jolla, California. It also includes Scripps Florida, whose researchers focus on basic biomedical science, drug discovery, and technology development. Scripps Florida is located in Jupiter, Florida.
Source: eurekalert.org
Posted under Compound Screening, Discoveries, Innovations and Patents, Grants and Awards, Industry News, Press Releases | Comments Off
BioLeap Wins GlaxoSmithKline Contract to Design Novel Lead Compounds for Previously Intractable Targets for Important Unmet Medical Needs.
Last Updated on Wednesday, 9 September 2009 10:34 Written by Editor Wednesday, 9 September 2009 10:34
BioLeap and GSK have entered into an agreement whereby BioLeap will design novel lead compounds for "difficult" drug targets. The targets (not disclosed) are ones for which conventional approaches, like high throughput screening, have failed to yield a viable chemical starting point. Typically these are in areas of high unmet medical need. BioLeap will use its computational fragment-based drug design platform to conceive compounds de novo that are molecularly tailored to bind to the target. GSK will synthesize and test the compounds in biochemical and cellular assays. The process will iterate until GSK selects a Lead Candidate. The terms of the agreement for services were not disclosed. David Pompliano, PhD, CEO of BioLeap said, "We are very pleased to be working with GSK to accelerate the discovery of truly novel medicines. BioLeap`s platform reliably predicts the effect of compound modifications on target affinity, thus minimizing unproductive guesswork during drug discovery, and producing a better drug candidate more quickly." About BioLeap BioLeap is a leader in computational fragment-based drug design. The company`s proprietary design technology and process successfully addresses one of the biggest problems in pre-clinical drug discovery: the limitation of drug like and patentable leads for important biological targets. BioLeap is using its completely "in-silico" platform to quickly and accurately predict fragment-protein binding information that provides drug designers new insights that enable them to efficiently create new and improved drug molecule candidates. The BioLeap computational approach addresses the time, cost, and low probability of success limitations imposed by traditional library screening and lead optimization methods. BioLeap is utilizing its capabilities to advance its own internal preclinical stage programs while collaboratively enabling non-competing programs with numerous pharmaceutical partners.
Source: reuters.com
Posted under Collaborations, Compound Screening, Diversity Libraries, Grants and Awards, Press Releases, Research Projects | Comments Off
Southern Research to Play Key Role in the Federal Government’s Search for New Cancer Therapies
Last Updated on Tuesday, 25 August 2009 03:29 Written by Editor Tuesday, 25 August 2009 03:29
National Cancer Institute Chemical Biology Consortium to coordinate academic, private and government cancer drug discovery efforts
BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Aug. 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Southern Research Institute today announced that it has been selected as one of 11 organizations to help establish the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Chemical Biology Consortium (CBC)–a program meant to coordinate and accelerate the discovery and development of new therapeutic agents to treat cancer patients. Southern Research will establish one of NCI’s five Comprehensive Chemical Biology Centers at its Birmingham campus.
“We are very pleased that Southern Research was selected to participate in this new program to expedite and coordinate the discovery and development of new cancer therapies,” said W. Blaine Knight, Ph.D., vice president of Drug Discovery and Principal Investigator of this effort at Southern Research. “Cancer accounts for nearly one out of every four deaths in this country and the National Institutes of Health estimate that the overall costs of cancer last year were more than $228 billion for health expenses and lost productivity. The search for newer and better drugs is never-ending, and something cancer patients and their families depend upon.”
Southern Research has a remarkable cancer-fighting track record having already discovered six FDA-approved drugs currently used in the treatment of cancer–amifostine, fludarabine, dacarbazine, lomustine, carmustine and clofarabine–with seven additional drugs in late stage preclinical and early clinical trials. Scientists at Southern Research have also evaluated approximately 50 percent of all FDA-approved cancer drugs currently available for patients.
“Our experience in cancer research and our track record in drug discovery were clearly recognized by our selection as a Comprehensive Center in the CBC consortium,” said John A. Secrist III, Ph.D., president and CEO of Southern Research. “We look forward to partnering with the federal government as it accelerates cancer drug discovery.”
As a Comprehensive Chemical Biology Center, Southern Research will focus on numerous aspects of preclinical drug research from target discovery, assay development, high throughput screening, structural/computational chemistry, and biology, through lead optimization and preclinical development. In addition Southern Research has an extensive compound library that will be made available for the CBC effort.
Dr. Knight says that work is expected to begin immediately.
This project has been funded in whole or in part with Federal Funds from the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, under Contract No. NO1-CO-12400. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Dept. of Health and Human Services, nor does the mention of trade names, commercial products or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.
About the Chemical Biology Consortium
The CBC will establish an integrated network of chemical biologists, molecular oncologists, and compound screening centers from government, academia, and eventually from industry. The drug discovery strategy of the CBC is to expand current NCI programs by providing a coordinated focus on therapeutic opportunities in high-risk, under-represented areas, significantly advancing the discovery of novel compounds active against specific molecular and genetic cancer targets. CBC efforts will include recruiting extramural investigators with specialized expertise in novel discovery platforms as well as medicinal chemistry, chemical biology, molecular oncology, and other areas of drug discovery and development. The CBC will be centrally managed to coordinate the selection of targets and screening for agents that interact with these targets, and will then use an iterative development process to design and optimize drug “hits” into “leads.” The CBC will benefit from access to the NCI’s late-stage drug development resources and expertise.
The program is being developed by NCI’s Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis (DCTD), in conjunction with NCI’s Center for Cancer Research (CCR) and the NCI Director’s Office, with guidance from external advisory panels. This effort will be managed by the NCI’s Experimental Therapeutics (NExT) Program. SAIC-Frederick, Inc. (SAIC-F) will provide support for the key operational and technical aspects. It is envisioned that this Consortium will provide cutting-edge chemical tools for probing complex biochemical signaling pathways and will serve as the starting point for the elaboration of first-in-class targeted therapies. The long-term vision of the CBC is to bridge the gap between basic scientific findings and NCI-supported clinical research to facilitate the discovery and development of new agents to treat patients with cancer.
Participants will have an unparalleled opportunity to participate in a highly collaborative drug discovery partnership with the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Using state-of-the-art communication, data-sharing and project management tools, the CBC will effect a paradigm shift in the use of public-private partnerships to translate knowledge from leading academic institutions into ground-breaking new drug candidates for patients with cancer.
About Southern Research Institute
Southern Research Institute is a nonprofit 501(c)3 scientific research organization that conducts preclinical drug discovery and development, and advanced engineering research in materials, systems development, environment and energy. Our more than 550 scientific and engineering team members support clients and partners in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, defense, aerospace, environmental and energy industries. Southern Research is headquartered in Birmingham, Ala., with facilities in Wilsonville, Ala., Anniston, Ala., Frederick, Md., and Durham, NC and offices in New Orleans, La., Washington, DC and Kiev, Ukraine. For more information about Southern Research and its capabilities and accomplishments, visit www.SouthernResearch.org.
Posted under Cancer Research, Grants and Awards, Press Releases, Research Projects | Comments Off
Vanderbilt Joins National Consortium to Develop New Cancer Therapies
Last Updated on Tuesday, 25 August 2009 03:27 Written by Editor Tuesday, 25 August 2009 03:27
Vanderbilt University has been selected as one of 10 centers in the nation to participate in the Chemical Biology Consortium (CBC), a major new initiative to facilitate the discovery and development of new agents to treat cancer.
As one of four Chemical Diversity Centers, Vanderbilt’s role in the consortium will be to synthesize and optimize new compounds as potential cancer therapeutics.
“This is a real tribute to our growth in cancer chemistry and the leverage between the Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology (VICB) and the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC),†said Lawrence Marnett, Ph.D., the Mary Geddes Stahlman Professor of Cancer Research and director of the VICB.
Alex Waterson, Ph.D., research assistant professor of Pharmacology and director of the VICB’s Chemical Synthesis Core, will lead efforts developing small molecule drug candidates. Gary Sulikowski, Ph.D., Stevenson Professor of Chemistry and a co-director of the core, will direct projects involving natural products.
Designed to accelerate the discovery and development of effective, first-in-class targeted therapies, the CBC will choose high-risk targets that are of low interest to the pharmaceutical industry. The CBC is a National Cancer Institute initiative administered by contractor SAIC-Frederick, Inc.
“It’s exciting in the sense that, right off the bat, (the NCI) said that the goal of this program is to develop drugs for cancer treatment,†said Sulikowski. “They’re looking for unique targets, unique approaches, and they think that academia may offer that.â€
“Oftentimes pharmaceutical companies will not go after targets that are not expected to be huge blockbusters,†said Waterson, who came to Vanderbilt in 2008 from GlaxoSmithKline where he had worked for seven years on oncology drug development projects. “So an effort like this can fill in a niche that industry is not taking on at the moment.â€
One particular area of interest is in screening and developing natural products as potential drug candidates.
This “is something that pharmaceutical industry has de-emphasized just because of the way things have evolved,†said Sulikowski. “And that’s one of our advantages, in that we have expertise in natural products as well as medicinal chemistry.â€
Cancer drug development poses many challenges – but also unique opportunities.
“There is a difficulty in that cancer is not a single disease; it’s a family of loosely related diseases,†said Waterson. “There’s an opportunity for a whole myriad of different treatments that are pretty much only tailored to a small subset of people, where your treatment addresses their specific need.â€
A unique aspect of the CBC is the NCI’s efforts to establish intellectual property rights for investigators and institutions that develop assays or drug candidates.
“The hope is that by recognizing establishment of intellectual property as one of the goals, they will attract people with the best ideas, things that really might be able to become a drug,†said Waterson.
Vanderbilt’s involvement with the CBC, along with the recent arrival of Stephen Fesik, Ph.D., who previously led cancer drug discovery efforts at Abbott Laboratories, will make Vanderbilt “one of the best academic institutions doing cancer drug discovery in the country,†Marnett said.
Other Vanderbilt investigators involved in this effort include:
• Brian Bachmann, Ph.D., assistant professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry
• Jeffrey Johnston, Ph.D., professor of Chemistry
• Jens Meiler, Ph.D., assistant professor of Chemistry, Pharmacology and Biomedical Informatics
• Craig Lindsley, Ph.D., associate professor of Pharmacology and Chemistry, and director of Medicinal Chemistry
Other sites participating in the CBC are:
• The Burnham Institute for Medical Research, in La Jolla, Calif.;
• Southern Research Institute in Birmingham, Ala.;
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill;
• Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.;
• University of Minnesota;
• University of Pittsburgh;
• University of Pittsburgh, Drug Discovery Institute;
• University of California, San Francisco;
• SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif.; and
• Emory University in Atlanta
This project has been funded in whole or in part with Federal Funds from the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, under Contract No. NO1-CO-12400. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Department of Health and Human Services, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.
Source:Â vanderbilt.edu
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National Cancer Institute names Emory to nationwide NCI chemical biology consortium
Last Updated on Tuesday, 25 August 2009 02:27 Written by Editor Tuesday, 25 August 2009 02:27
CBC will support rapid development of innovative, targeted cancer therapies
Emory University’s Chemical Biology Discovery Center has been selected by SAIC-Frederick, Inc. (SAIC-F) to be part of an 11-member national consortium aimed at accelerating the discovery and development of new and innovative, targeted cancer therapies. SAIC-F is the prime contractor to the National Cancer Institute at Frederick (NCI-Frederick).
The national Chemical Biology Consortium (CBC) will bridge the gap between basic scientific investigation and clinical research supported by the NCI. The consortium will focus on unmet medical needs, such as drugs that are of low interest to the pharmaceutical industry but that could have significant benefit for patients. It is expected to bring the skills of hundreds of chemical biologists, oncologists, and synthetic and medicinal chemists to bear on particularly challenging problems in molecular oncology.
Examples of the CBC’s innovative discovery pathways could include re-engineering investigators’ assays into high-throughput screens; rapidly synthesizing natural products that show promise as drug targets in a particular form of cancer; making new compounds water-soluble; and accelerating the development of drug candidates with great clinical promise.
As one of three Specialized Application Centers in the NCI Consortium, the Emory Chemical Biology Discovery Center will focus its broad capability and special expertise on protein-protein interactions in cancer through assay development and implementation, high-throughput screening, medicinal chemistry optimization and informatics, with the participation of an intellectual property specialist.
“Recent advances in our understanding of the molecular basis of cancer have led scientists to identify oncogenes and pathways involved in tumor development that offer unprecedented opportunities for innovative drug discovery,” says Haian Fu, PhD, director of the Emory Chemical Biology Discovery Center and principal investigator of the Emory CBC center. Fu is professor of pharmacology, hematology & medical oncology in Emory University School of Medicine and a co-leader of the Discovery and Developmental Therapeutics Program of the Emory Winship Cancer Institute.
“This consortium will allow the NCI and the consortium members to pursue innovative strategies and dedicate resources to interrogating new signaling pathways and promising but difficult targets for the rapid discovery and development of clinically viable new compounds that might not otherwise be developed. Examples include pediatric cancer targets,” says Fu.
The Emory center is anchored by investigators within the Emory Winship Cancer Institute and integrated with drug discovery and development capabilities of researchers throughout campus. Co-principal investigators of the Emory CBC Center are Fadlo Khuri, MD, deputy director for clinical and translational research in Emory Winship Cancer Institute and professor and chair of hematology & medical oncology, and Dennis Liotta, PhD, Emory professor of chemistry.
“Emory has a strong foundation of team science and collaboration, high throughput screening expertise and a solid record of success in the NIH Molecular Libraries Screening Centers Network,” says Liotta. “We have a team of assay biologists, screening scientists and informatics experts working side by side with medicinal chemists. Our record of drug discovery and partnerships with pharmaceutical companies show that we have the experience and expertise to serve as national leaders in cancer drug discovery.”
The Georgia Cancer Coalition (GCC) is providing matching funds for the Emory CBC Center of approximately $750,000. Emory will provide other matching funds for the Center. The Georgia Research Alliance provided initial support for the Chemical Biology Discovery Center.
“We are proud and delighted that the National Cancer Institute has once again reached out to Georgia for leadership in cancer control,” says William J. Todd, president and chief executive officer of the Georgia Cancer Coalition. “By supporting Emory’s participation in this national cancer drug discovery initiative, we are reinforcing the state’s comprehensive cancer control plan goal to accelerate improvements in cancer treatment. This designation brings us yet one step closer to making Georgia one of the nation’s premier states for cancer control.”
“As a molecular oncologist and a cancer clinician, I am very pleased with this opportunity for Emory’s involvement in a national NCI consortium to speed drug discovery,” says Khuri. “This is a very exciting time for cancer research, and I am optimistic this consortium will result in significant research advances that soon will benefit patients with particularly challenging types of cancer.”
As a member of the national consortium, the Emory center will join forces with the NCI and other national centers for project-team based accelerated cancer drug discovery operations from target identification, high throughput screening, all the way through clinical trials. It will be funded through a contractual agreement mechanism with the NCI.
In 2005 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded Emory $9 million in the pilot phase of the National Molecular Libraries Screening Center Network (MLSCN). The network uses high-tech screening methods on huge libraries of small molecular compounds to identify probes as promising molecular research tools.
Emory’s CBC selection by the NCI built on Emory’s already established Chemical Biology Discovery Center and its experience in MLSCN. The Emory Chemical Biology Discovery Center is an interdisciplinary collaboration among research departments in Emory School of Medicine and Emory College. The Center also uses high-throughput technologies to screen libraries of hundreds of thousands of small molecule compounds against promising molecular targets identified by Emory scientists.
For more information about the NCI Chemical Biology Consortium: http://plan,cancer.gov./Chemical_Biology_Consortium.htm
For more information about the Emory Chemical Biology Discovery Center: http://www.emory.edu/chemical-biology/#
Emory Medicine Magazine article on drug discovery at Emory: http://whsc.emory.edu/_pubs/em/2006spring/drug_discovery.html
NIH Names Emory University a National Molecular Libraries Screening Center (press release) http://whsc.emory.edu/press_releses_print.cfm?announcement_id_seq=4040
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Cognition Therapeutics Closes Series A Financing to Advance Drug Candidates for Alzheimer’s Disease
Last Updated on Friday, 21 August 2009 01:12 Written by Editor Friday, 21 August 2009 01:12
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Start-up company continues momentum with selection of disease-modifying small molecule drug leads for behavioral testing
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PITTSBURGH, July 16 /PRNewswire/ — Cognition Therapeutics Inc., a Pittsburgh-based drug discovery company developing small molecule disease-modifying treatments for Alzheimer’s, has closed on a $1.21M Series A financing. The round was led by Ogden CAP, LLC of New York City and includes M5Invest Partners of Villanova, PA, the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, Innovation Works (Pittsburgh), and several individual investors. The round included both new investments and the conversion of existing convertible notes.
“This investment facilitates the advancement of our existing lead molecules towards a major milestone,” said Cognition Therapeutics President and CEO Hank Safferstein, Ph.D., J.D. “Our combination of novel, small molecule drug candidates and biologically-relevant screening methods is unique in the pharmaceutical industry. We’re pleased to have Ogden CAP and M5Invest join our other investors in supporting our pioneering approach to treat or prevent Alzheimer’s disease by targeting the proteins that cause the earliest stages of this disease”. “As early investors, we are impressed by Cognition Therapeutics’ combination of cutting-edge technology, influential and experienced leadership, and large clinical and commercial potential,” said Robert Gailus, senior advisor to Ogden CAP. “Alzheimer’s disease is a major health epidemic that places increasing strains on the world’s healthcare systems as the population ages. The drug candidates being developed by Cognition have the potential to significantly impact this devastating disease,” Gailus continued. Alzheimer’s disease affects an estimated four and a half million people in the United States today. That number is expected to exceed 12 million people by 2050. Funds raised in this round will support advancement of Cognition Therapeutics’ pioneering lead molecules that block the activity of the toxic oligomeric form of Abeta protein that interferes with normal learning and memory. Studies from the world’s leading academic laboratories indicate that the memory deficits caused by the oligomeric protein are among the earliest changes seen in Alzheimer’s disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment, the precursor to Alzheimer’s. These studies indicate that blocking the effects of this protein may halt or reverse Alzheimer’s disease. Cognition will use these funds to test its most promising lead molecules in behavioral models of Alzheimer’s disease. “The advancement of the company’s lead compounds into behavioral testing represents a significant milestone for the company,” says Dr. Franz Hefti, Chairman of the Board. “Cognition’s scientific approach is unique among the approaches being taken by the pharmaceutical industry today. Cognition has a novel Alzheimer’s disease model for the critical molecular step that causes memory loss. In addition, the company’s proprietary chemistry is based on natural molecular scaffolds which brought us effective drugs like aspirin, lidocaine and taxol. We anticipate new disease-modifying drugs for Alzheimer’s disease will result from this unique combination,” Dr. Hefti continued. About Cognition Cognition Therapeutics, Inc. is a leader in the discovery and development of small molecule therapeutics targeting the toxic proteins that cause the cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s disease and other degenerative diseases of the human brain. Toxic proteins play a crucial role in a large class of diseases, and there are currently no therapeutics available to prevent or block the destructive effects of toxic oligomeric proteins. Cognition has leveraged its scientific expertise with these difficult targets to pioneer the use of proprietary assays that emphasize functional responses and proprietary medicinal chemistry that ensures novel, high quality small-molecule drug candidates for the treatment of these diseases. Cognition has developed a number of screening strategies to identify small molecules capable of blocking the central toxicity of proteins in Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases. These assays emphasize phenotypic or functional responses of mature primary neurons to the toxic proteins. Cognition’s proprietary chemistry platform converts natural products into low molecular weight chemically stable druglike molecules, and is thus a source of novel pharmacophores and valuable drug candidates. These two technology platforms harken back to the origins of the pharmaceutical industry, when phenotypic responses were the sole screening method and natural product derivatives formed the starting materials for successful drug discovery. Cognition Therapeutics was founded on small molecule chemical libraries licensed from co-founder Dr. Gilbert Rishton at California State University Channel Islands and proprietary screening strategies established by co-founder and Chief Science Officer Dr. Susan Catalano. After initial investment and relocation to Pittsburgh, the company secured Dr. Hank Safferstein as President and CEO, bringing with him more than 15 years of leadership experience in drug development, commercialization and marketing for a number of public and private companies. www.cogrx.com. About Ogden CAP, LLC Ogden CAP, LLC is a New York company that has investments is a wide variety of asset classes, including venture capital. Over the past two years Ogden CAP, LLC has invested in 10 early stage companies. Besides its investment in Cognition, Ogden CAP, LLC has two other investments in the Pittsburgh area: FASTTAC, a document control and management company for the construction industry, and TSG, Inc. an energy company that converts coal to fuels. About the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse (PLSG) The Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse (PLSG) provides capital investments and customized company formation and business growth services to western Pennsylvania’s life sciences enterprises. The PLSG supports biosciences companies with promising innovations in the following concentrations: Biotechnology Tools, Diagnostics, Healthcare IT, Medical Devices and Therapeutics. The PLSG is propelling the sustainable growth of the region’s life sciences economy by accelerating research and technology commercialization with seed and early-stage companies; connecting investors with their Investment Portfolio companies; expanding established life sciences ventures and relocating biomedical companies to Pennsylvania. About Innovation Works (IW) Innovation Works provides risk capital and business expertise to the most promising early-stage technology companies in Southwestern PA to help them grow and succeed. Innovation Works is one of the most active seed-stage investors in the country, having invested in more than 120 emerging technology companies since beginning their seed fund in 1999. Those companies have gone on to raise over $600 million in additional capital from a diverse set of VCs, private investors, strategic partners and other sources of capital. |
SOURCE Cognition Therapeutics Inc.
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CLC bio’s enterprise platform wins award at Bio-IT World Expo in Boston
Last Updated on Sunday, 10 May 2009 08:32 Written by admin Sunday, 10 May 2009 08:32
Boston, Massachusetts, USA — April 30, 2009 — CLC bio’s enterprise platform for Next Generation Sequencing data analysis, CLC Genomics Server, has just been awarded the “Best of Show†prize at the Bio-IT World Conference & Expo 2009 – an award judged by a team of Bio-IT World magazine editors and leading industry experts.
Bio-IT World Editor-in-Chief Kevin Davies, PhD., comments, “Each year we go through a process where our judging panel debates the technical merits and likely business impact of the different technologies presented at the Best of Show awards. CLC bio’s success this year clearly reflects the importance of the incredibly exciting Next Generation Sequencing space, with a solution that is obviously gaining traction with it’s capabilities to handle the immense data management and analytical challenges required in this area.â€
“Judging on several criteria, such as the importance of the problem being addressed and the elegance of the solution provided, it was clear to the judging panel that CLC Genomics Server, and the flexible plug-in structure it provides, delivers an ideal platform for researchers working with Next Generation Sequencing data.†says M. Michael Barmada, PhD. – member of the “Best of Show†judging panel and Director of the Center for Computational Genetics at the Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh. “It’s nice to see complex computational algorithms and routines presented with an elegant interface in a user-friendly way, which lowers the technical barriers for all researchers working with high-throughput sequence data analysis.â€
CLC Genomics Server is CLC bio’s advanced and powerful bioinformatics solution which is built upon a powerful and modern three-tier server architecture, that yields flexible options of executing centralized services, easy integration with other applications and services, powerful database communication and data integration, and secure access control framework and central action logging. Customers already using this enterprise platform, includes J. Craig Venter Institute, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Veridex, and University of California – Berkeley. Read more about this solution here:
http://www.clcbio.com/index.php?id=1376
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Nanion nominated for The German Industry’s Innovation Award
Last Updated on Friday, 23 January 2009 10:22 Written by admin Friday, 23 January 2009 10:22
Munich, Germany, Jan 20th, 2009; Nanion is again nominated for a prestigious
innovation award, due its impressive product portfolio of automated patch clamp
systems. More than 350 companies competed in this year’s Innovation Award and
Nanion is finalist in the category “Start-Up Companiesâ€.
The German Industry’s Innovation Award, also the world’s first innovation award, has since 1980 annually nominated and rewarded the nation’s most important scientific and technical innovations. Nanion is one of the five remaining candidates for the award and the winner will be announced on January 24th, 2009.
“To remain a profitable and leading provider of advanced and high quality ion channel drug screening systems, we constantly seek new inventions and solutions that are attractive to industrial and academic institutions.†says Michael George, CTO of Nanion. Dr. Niels Fertig, CEO of Nanion, continues “Our three product families for sophisticated cell analysis are
being used in the development of new medicines as well as in academic research. With the latest introduction of our high throughput patch clamp system, the SyncroPatch 96, the screening of ion channel drugs is revolutionized in terms of time and cost efficiency. We are happy and honoured that our products and technology are receiving such recognition by the nomination for this award.â€
The SyncroPatch 96 is Nanion’s next generation screening platform, capable of highly parallel
recordings from up to 96 cells at a time. It will be launched at the Biophysical Society’s Annual Meeting in Boston, MA, USA, in the end of February, 2009. The SyncroPatch 96 is the first platform on the market to date that supports giga-seal recordings at a throughput of 5000 data points per day.
About Nanion:
Nanion Technologies GmbH is a German Private Limited Company and was founded in 2002 as a spinoff from the Center for Nanoscience (CeNS) of the University of Munich. Nanion’s team has developed and globally established two highly successful automated patch clamp instruments as enabling tools for sophisticated and high throughput applications for ion channel research and drug discovery. Nanion’s instruments use planar patch clamp chips which replace the traditional glass pipette used in the technique of patch clamping. Nanion was nominated in 2007 for Germany’s most prestigious innovation award the Deutscher Zukunftspreis (German Future Prize, Federal President’s Award for Technology and Innovation).
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Profiling of Tumor Tissue Slices is Awarded Prize
Last Updated on Saturday, 1 December 2007 07:22 Written by admin Saturday, 1 December 2007 07:22
Novel drug screening tool based on the Bionas® 2500 analyzing system wins silver medal in European business plan contest
Rostock, Germany, November 26, 2007 / b3c newswire / – Bionas GmbH, a specialist for in vitro profiling the metabolic activity of cells, announced that Prof. Pedro Mestres of the Saarland University (Homburg/Saar, Germany) has been awarded the second prize in the business plan contest 1,2,3 GO for a novel drug sensitivity screening tool based on the Bionas technology.
Tumors react in different ways against anti-cancer drugs. It is therefore important to determine tumor drug sensitivity in order to establish a tumor and patient-specific therapy in the clinic.
Prof. Mestres, who plans to found a company for drug screening services in early 2008, has developed a tissue slicing technology producing microtumors that retain near-original tissue structure and cell activity. These microtumors are then analyzed with the Bionas® 2500 analyzing system for their metabolic activity upon drug treatment.
With the Bionas 2500 instrument we can analyze the metabolic pattern of the tissue slices in a highly precise way, “says Prof. Pedro Mestres. “This enables us to profile tissue specimens from tumor patients for optimal drug responsivenessâ€.
The Bionas® 2500 analyzing system gives a complete overview of the physiological state of cells and tissues by analyzing metabolic and morphological parameters over a long period.
About Bionas www.bionas.de
Bionas GmbH, located in Rostock, Germany, specializes in analyzing systems and services for in vitro profiling the metabolic activity of cells to understand cellular function. Bionas® 2500 analyzing system measures extracellular acidification, oxygen consumption and cell adhesion label-free and noninvasively. It can be applied to various cell types including primary cells and tissues. The readout is performed continuously and can be monitored online. Main applications include drug profiling, lead optimization, pharmacokinetics, early toxicology programs, ADME/Tox, chemosensitivity testing, toxicological testing of chemical substances (REACH) and cell culture monitoring and optimization.
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ERA-NET PathoGenoMics recognises outstanding PhD theses
Last Updated on Thursday, 25 October 2007 12:29 Written by admin Thursday, 25 October 2007 12:29
Increasingly, disease-causing microorganisms are being analysed on a genetic level in the hope of identifying critical factors that might be therapeutically applicable. European research in this area is being promoted under the roof of the ERA-NET PathoGenoMics network. During the 3rd European Conference on Procaryotic Genomics, held from 7 to 10 October in Göttingen, Germany, the network recognised three outstanding pathogenomic PhD theses. This year is the second time the prize has been awarded. The winners were selected from ten applications.
The ERA-NET PathoGenoMics was initiated in 2004 by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and is a network of 15 partners from Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Latvia, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain. Their aim is to promote genomic research on pathogenic microorganisms (pathogenomics) taking place in Europe. It was initiated in 2004 and is one of around 70 ERA-NET networks aimed at counteracting the fragmentation of the European Research Area. The ERA-NET scheme is a funding instrument of the European Commission, first introduced in the Sixth Framework Programme. The underlying intention is to step up the cooperation in research activities carried out at a national or regional level in the member states.
For the second time, the ERA-NET PathoGenoMics has recognised outstanding PhD theses in the field of pathogenomics research. The annual prize is endowed with 2000 Euros for each winner. This year, three reseachers have been chosen from a total of ten applications: Christel Archambaud (France), Cédric Delevoye (France) and Joâo Paulo dos Santos Gomes (Portugal). The official award ceremony took place during the 3rd European Conference on Procaryotic Genomics in Göttingen, Germany, on 8 October. Following an introduction by Nicole Firnberg (Austria), the winning researchers had the opportunity to present the results of their thesis. The researchers were later presented with their awards by the French scientist Philippe Glaser (Institute Pasteur, Paris): a large petri dish with synthetic resin as imitation agar, through which the official award certificate can be seen, as well as a hard copy of the certificate rolled in a volumetric flask.
Christel Archambaud from the Institut Pasteur in Paris has focused on the analysis of a special enzyme family involved in signal transduction (phosphatases) and its role in the pathogenicity of Listeria monocytogetes, which can cause a number of deadly infections due to its sophisticated survival and reproduction strategy once it has entered a host. In her PhD thesis, Archambaud has identified a functional phosphatase (Stp) that appears to be crucial for the virulence of Listeria.
Cédric Delevoye, working at the Institute Curie in Paris, has analysed the intracellular infection cycle of Chlamydia. Chlamydia is a sneaky bacterial genus that can only reproduce from within host cells and causes chronic infections that are extremely difficult or impossible to treat. In his PhD thesis, Delevoye focussed on identifying membrane proteins that are secreted by Chlamydia pneumoniae during infection. In addition, he functionally characterised a single protein from the IncA-family that appears to be essential for cellular membrane fusion events.
Joâo Paulo dos Santos Gomes, working at the National Institute of Health in Lisbon, studied biological and genetic features of Chlamydia trachomatis serological variants to reveal their different pathogenic potential. Dos Santos Gomes identified highly polymorphic so-called pmp genes as playing a significant role in infection and transmission ability based on transcriptomic and immunoactivity analysis. Furthermore, he found recombination among strains to be a mechanism for generating Chlamydia trachomatis diversity.
Research group leaders from the ERA-NET partner countries are now invited to submit a proposal for the PhD Award 2008. Deadline for submissions is the 28 February 2008. For national contact details see www.pathogenomics-era.net
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FDA approves Merck’s Isentress for HIV
Last Updated on Thursday, 18 October 2007 01:22 Written by admin Thursday, 18 October 2007 01:22
Oct 16, 2007 (Datamonitor via COMTEX) — MRK | charts | news | PowerRating — The FDA has granted Merck & Co.’s Isentress tablets accelerated approval for use in combination with other antiretroviral agents for the treatment of HIV-1 infection in treatment-experienced adult patients who have evidence of viral replication and HIV-1 strains resistant to multiple antiretroviral agents.
This indication is based on analyses of plasma HIV-1 RNA levels up through 24 weeks in two controlled studies of Isentress (raltegravir). These studies were conducted in clinically advanced, three-class antiretroviral treatment-experienced adults.
The use of other active agents with Isentress is associated with a greater likelihood of treatment response.
The drug’s safety and efficacy have not been established in treatment-naive adult patients or pediatric patients. Longer-term data will be required before the FDA can consider traditional approval for Isentress.
Peter Kim, president of Merck Research Laboratories, said: “Isentress is the first drug in a new class of antiretroviral therapies that when used in combination with other effective antiretroviral agents, offers a new opportunity for individuals whose HIV infection is no longer adequately controlled and whose virus is resistant to multiple agents. This approval builds on our longstanding commitment to research in HIV/AIDS, with the goal of making truly differentiated therapies available to patients in need.”
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Posted under Discoveries, Innovations and Patents, Grants and Awards, HIV Research, North America, Press Releases | Comments Off
Nanion’s Technology Nominated for Presidential Innovation Award
Last Updated on Sunday, 14 October 2007 07:43 Written by admin Sunday, 14 October 2007 07:43
Munich , Oct 11, 2007 : The planar patch clamp technology used in a family of automated electrophysiology products developed and marketed by Nanion Technologies GmbH in Munich , Germany , is among four technological and scientific innovations that have been nominated for this year’s Deutscher Zukunftspreis (German Future Award). The nomination of the project “Small Holes – Big Effects: Cell Physiology in a Chip Format” represented by Nanion’s CEO, Niels Fertig as well as CSO Andrea Brüggemann and Chairman of the Board Jan C. Behrends (University of Freiburg) was today announced in a press conference by Dr. Gert Haller, Secretary of State in the Office of the Federal President in Berlin. With the Deutscher Zukunftspreis, awarded once a year, the German Federal President honours outstanding achievements in Science and Technology. In their nominations for Germany’s most prestigious research award along with the Leibniz Prize, the Jury also appraises the commercial and employment-creation potential of scientific innovations. The prize will be bestowed on one of the four nominated teams by Federal President Horst Köhler on December 6.
Nanion Technologies is a start-up company founded in 2002 by a team of researchers (Dr. Niels Fertig, Dr. Robert H. Blick and Dr. Jan C. Behrends) from the Center for Nanoscience of the University of Munich and the company is run by the management team consisting of Dr. Niels Fertig (CEO), Dr. Andrea Brüggemann (CSO) and Michael George (CTO). Nanion has developed and successfully marketed the Port-a-Patch, a miniaturized patch clamp device, and, since 2006, the Patchliner, a fully automated higher throughput patch-clamp robot. Both devices use the NPC- patch clamp chips which are based on the research which has now been nominated for the award. They replace the traditional glass pipette used in the technique of patch clamping (E. Neher, B. Sakmann, Nobel Prize 1991) and enable automated and higher-throughput testing of potentially ion-channel active substances.
Links:
http://www.nanion.de
http://www.deutscher-zukunftspreis.de/newsite/nominierte/index.shtml
Posted under Europe, Grants and Awards, Press Releases | Comments Off
Portraitâ„¢ 630 Reagent Multi-spotter Wins Technology Prize at MipTec 10th Anniversary Conference in Basel, Switzerland
Last Updated on Thursday, 31 May 2007 03:14 Written by admin Thursday, 31 May 2007 03:14
Sunnyvale, CA, May 22, 2007 – Portraitâ„¢ 630 Reagent Multi-spotter Wins Technology Prize at MipTec 10th Anniversary Conference in Basel, Switzerland
The European Laboratory Robotics Interest Group (ELRIG) has selected the Labcyte Portrait 630 reagent multi-spotter as the winner of its annual Technology Prize, awarded this year at the MipTec 10th Anniversary Conference, held May 8-11, 2007 in Basel, Switzerland. The award recognizes the most innovative product presented at the conference. A panel of independent judges selected the Portrait 630 system from among hundreds of products displayed by 114 vendors. The ELRIG is a not-for-profit organization, whose primary purpose is to provide a communication forum for members to increase their awareness of automation techniques and products used for scientific research, development or production. MipTec has evolved as the leading conference in Europe on enabling technologies in the drug discovery process. It combines a scientific program featuring scientific and technology experts with an accompanying exhibition.
The Portrait 630 reagent multi-spotter uses the Labcyte acoustic droplet ejection technology to bring automated reagent deposition to the new field of MALDI tissue imaging mass spectrometry (IMS). IMS links the label-free universal detection of mass spectrometry with the spatial information of molecular histology. IMS enables discovery in protein profiling, small molecule tracking, and other applications. The Portrait 630 reagent multi-spotter provides multi-step protocols, precise drop-on-drop positioning and flexible droplet timing, to automate sequential experiments such as proteolytic digests followed by matrix deposition. The Portrait 630 system enables users to optimize reaction conditions and crystal formation for more reproducible and higher quality mass spectra.
Labcyte Inc., headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, is the world leader in providing acoustic droplet ejection technology for pharmaceutical and life science applications. The award-winning Echo 500 series liquid handlers and Portrait 630 reagent multi-spotters are used in nine of the 10 largest pharmaceutical companies, as well as in leading academic and research institutions and contract research organizations worldwide. The Labcyte acoustic droplet ejection technology has broad applications including compound management, assays, arraying, particle manufacturing, imaging mass spectrometry, and live-cell transfer. Labcyte also provides a range of unique microplate consumables. Labcyte has 28 issued U.S. patents, 3 issued European patents and additional international filings. For more information, visit www.labcyte.com.
Posted under Equipment & Supplies, Europe, Europe, Grants and Awards, North America, Press Releases | Comments Off
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