Bio Screening Industry News

VANCOUVER, BC — (Marketwire) — 07/16/09 — Sirona Biochem Corp. (TSX-V: SBM) announced today it is now ready to begin testing its novel new compounds to fight diabetes and obesity.

The completion of the company’s key SGLT biological assessment test and testing will be done under contract with Richmond, BC based SignalChem.

Sirona Biochem owns the worldwide rights to a library of potential new sodium glucose transporter (SGLT) inhibitors developed to treat diabetes and obesity. SGLT Inhibitors are a novel new drug class currently under development that block the reuptake of excess sugars from urine in the kidney which can then reduce high blood sugar to normal levels. Excess sugar in the blood is a primary medical challenge associated with treating diabetes and obesity.

Sirona has a research and development agreement with TFChem (Rouen, France), where a significant number of SGLT drug analogs are being prepared for first stage evaluation. Preliminary primary stage testing conducted earlier this year provided positive indications to support Sirona Biochem’s project and provided key insights to optimize the new test that is now ready for use to evaluate the next library set of molecules.

Mark Senner, President, explained, “SGLT inhibitors are a new and exciting class of compounds that have great promise to treat both diabetes and obesity which are now at epidemic levels worldwide. This new drug class is one considered to have extraordinary market potential in the fight against diabetes and obesity.

“Development of this new drug class however is challenging due to the fragile nature of these ’sugar’ based molecules that render them unstable and difficult to develop for clinical use. Given this challenge, it is believed that the use of the patented GlycoMim® technology, licensed from TFChem to develop SGLT Inhibitors, will increase drug stability and, therefore, improve their overall clinical effectiveness. Potential licensing and development partners have expressed interest in our concept of improving molecules in this new drug class. We intend to develop ‘best in class’ SGLT Inhibitors through use of this technology.

“The key and critical first test has been developed and optimized for use by SignalChem under contract from Sirona Biochem. Through use of this proprietary test, the company will be able to determine which molecules have the desired potency and selectivity compared to a reference standard. Screening of the current library of compounds will generate key data for ongoing drug development and provide first stage proof of concept necessary to secure future partnering opportunities. Sirona’s scientific team aims to identify lead compounds by the end of 2009,” continued Senner.

“The results from our new optimized test will be critical to direct our ongoing development of novel new SGLT inhibitors. The development and optimization of this sophisticated test, completed by SignalChem, is a significant and key milestone achievement for us. We are very pleased with the progress that we are making on our SGLT drug development program,” commented Senner.

Upon selection of compounds with the desired potency and selectivity for the SGLT 2 carrier protein, further preclinical screening for cytotoxicity, ADME properties, pharmacokinetics and in vivo efficacy will need to be carried out to select compounds for future clinical development. The primary objective of this critical first stage development plan with SignalChem was to develop, qualify and optimize the key test required for the initial development of SGLT inhibitors.

Investors are invited to visit the Sirona Biochem website at: http://www.sironabiochem.com where we feature the most recent information about the company and its activities. Alternatively, investors are able to e-mail all questions and correspondence to info@sironabiochem.com where they can also request to be added to the investor e-mail list to receive all future press releases and updates or call John Dougherty, Corporate Development at 604-641-4466.

About the Company:

Sirona Biochem Corp. (TSX-V: SBM) is a emerging biotech company dedicated to the discovery and development of novel drug compounds. The current focus is on treatments for Type II Diabetes and Obesity. Sirona has entered into a license agreement with TFChem S.A.R.L., a Drug Discovery company based in Rouen, France. TFChem licenses its technology of fluorinated carbohydrate mimics: GlycoMim®, and products in development to biotech companies. The license agreement with TFChem provides for research and development of new compounds known as S.G.L.T. inhibitors. S.G.L.T. inhibitors are a new and exciting class of compounds that have great promise and potential to treat both diabetes and obesity.

About SignalChem:

SignalChem, based in Richmond, B.C., Canada is a biotechnology company focused on the research, development and production of innovative cell signaling products to advance basic research and drug discovery efforts, with specific emphasis on the production of highly purified biologically active human recombinant proteins. SignalChem is emerging as a leader and a key contender in the life science recombinant protein market place. SignalChem offers a comprehensive discovery service which includes: gene cloning & expression of therapeutic ‘targets,’ custom assay & antibody development and compound profiling for drug ‘potency’ & ’selectivity.’

Mark Senner
President and Director

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Sirona Biochem
950-789 West Pender Street
Vancouver, B.C., V6C 1H2
Direct: 604-641-4466
Fax: 604-608-5471
info@sironabiochem.com

Source: www.sys-con.com

SOURCE Cognition Therapeutics Inc.

I had a printout of the structure of maitotoxin on my desk the other day, mostly as a joke to alarm anyone who came into my office. “Yep, here’s the best hit from the latest screen. . .I hear that you’re on the list to run the chemistry end. . .what’s that you say?”

This is, needless to say, one of the largest and scariest marine natural product structures ever determined (and that determination has been no stroll past the dessert table, either).

But that’ hasn’t stopped people from messing around with it. And there’s much speculation that other people are strongly considering messing around with it, too - you synthetic chemists can guess the sorts of people that this might be, and their names, and what it might be like to sit through the seminars that result, and so on.

I fear that a total synthesis of maitotoxin would be largely a waste of time, but I’m willing to hear arguments against that position. Just looking at it, though, inspires thought. This eldrich beastie has 98 chiral centers. So let’s do some math. If you’re interested in the SAR of such molecules, you have your choice of (two to the 98th) possible isomers, which comes out to a bit over (3 times ten to the 29th) compounds. This is. . .a pretty large number. If you’re looking for 10mg of each isomer to add to your screening collection (no sense in going back and making them again), then you’re looking at a good bit over half the mass of the entire Earth. And that’s just in sheer compounds; we’re not counting the weight of vials, which will, I’d say, safely move you up toward the planetary weight of a low-end gas giant. We will ignore shelving considerations in the interest of time.

Recall that yesterday’s post gave a number of about 27 million compounds below 11 heavy atoms. You could toss 27 million compounds into a collection of ten to the 29th and never see them again, of course. But that brings up two points: one, that the small-compound estimate ignores stereochemistry, and we’ve been getting those insane maitotoxin numbers by considering nothing but. The thing is, with only 11 non-hydrogen atoms, there aren’t quite as many chances for things to get out of control. The GDB compound set goes up only to 110 million or so if you consider stereoisomers, which actually isn’t nearly as much as I’d thought.

But the second point is that this shows you why the Berne group stopped at 11 heavy atoms, because the problem becomes intractable really fast as you go higher. It’s worth remembering that the GDB people actually threw out over 98% of their scaffolds because they represented potential ring structures that are too strained to be very stable. And they only considered C, N, O and F as heavy atoms (even adding sulfur was considered too much to deal with, computationally). Then they tossed out another 98 or 99% of the structures that emerged from that enumeration as reactive and/or unstable. Relax your standards a bit, allow another atom or two, bump up the molecular weight, do any of those and you’re going to exceed anyone’s computational capacity. Update: the Berne group has just taken a crack at it, and managed a reasonable set up to 13 heavy atoms, with various simplifying assumptions to ease the burden. If you want to mess around with it, it’s here, free of charge).

Source: Corante

Top leaders and key decision-makers of major companies representing a broad range of industries will meet with distinguished scientists, public health officials, law enforcers, first responders, and other experts to discuss pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery at the 1st International Swine Flu Summit.

At the summit, attendees will be able to draw on first-hand best practices to create the solid business continuity plans that their companies and organizations need in order to prepare for, respond to, and survive a pandemic.

The summit draws on the success of the seven previous Bird Flu summits which featured as speakers several distinguished personalities such as Dr. David Nabarro, the United Nations Coordinator for Avian and Human Influenza, Alex Thiermann of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) and Dr. Wenqing Zhang of the WHO Epidemic and Pandemic Alert and Response.

Well-known emergency responders, heads of hospitals from around the world, and hog/swine industry leaders will speak in this summit.

Topics Include:
	Country Report & Situations Update
	Surveillance and Data Management
	Preparing Communities Strategies; Local Partnership and Participation
	Delivery of Vaccine and Antiviral Medication
	National Pandemic Influenza Medical Countermeasure
	Socio Economic Impact on Hog/Swine Industry
	Benefit-risk Assessment: Public Health, Industry and Regulatory Perspectives
	Prevention Education Efforts and Risk Communication
	Command, Control and Management
	Emergency Response Management
	Business-Based Planning
	School-Based Planning
	Community-Based Planning

http://new-fields.com/isfc/

Last October, TimTec and Collaborative Drug Discovery (CDD) established a collaboration in which CDD’s web-based data management system would host two TimTec Natural Products libraries on their free community Public Access site.  Through this partnership, researchers would be able to register for a free account with CDD allowing them to chemically mine the contents of these TimTec compound libraries using CDD’s powerful, intuitive web-based database software.

TimTec is now offering three more libraries on the CDD Public Access database:

The TimTec ActiTarg-K Kinase Modulators library contains over 6,000 compounds known to inhibit protein kinase activity:

http://www.timtec.net/actitarg-k-kinase-modulators.html

The TimTec OGT Inhibitors Analogs library contains more than 300 compounds analogous to three known O-GlcNAc Transferase inhibiting molecules:

http://www.timtec.net/o-glcnac-transferase-inhibitors.html

Finally, the TimTec resourceful Diversity Set is a general screening collection of drug-like compounds that present most diversified selection from TimTec stock. This screening library contains 10,000 of the most diverse compounds, all complying with the Lipinski Rule of Five:

http://www.timtec.net/diversity-set-10k.html

TimTec’s five databases join more than 25 other databases containing chemical and biological data hosted on CDD Public Access, including:

• 47,000 Ki values for 20,000 compounds against 699 GPCR targets from the NIMH Psychoactive Drug Screening Program at the University of North Carolina
• Over 15,000 compounds with Malaria assay data from 5 public data sources
• 48,818 compounds from the Distributed Drug Discovery (D3) at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
• Almost 7,500 compounds with Tuberculosis antibacterial and cell viability information from 4 public data sets and growing thanks to their collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

About TimTec, LLC.

TimTec LLC. - http://www.timtec.net - is a privately held company located in NewarkDelaware, USA. It was founded in 1995 and began its work in the areas of acquisition and distribution of synthetic organic and natural compounds, custom synthesis, and laboratory equipment to become a full service partner for drug discovery. TimTec has established a global network of thousands of scientists from research centers around the world. The company has developed strong in-house expertise assembling general and targeted library collections for variety of research purposes. International customers include major pharmaceutical, biotech, agricultural, and educational companies and institutions, which use TimTec products for research and development programs.

For more information on TimTec library collections, please contact:

Kay Denisova
Business Development
TimTec LLC
Harmony Business Park Building 301-A
Newark, DE 19711
Tel 302 292 8500
Fax 302 292 8520
info(at)timtec.net
http://www.timtec.net

About Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc.

Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc. (CDD) - http://www.collaborativedrug.com - provides web-based software that organizes preclinical research data to help scientists advance new drug candidates more effectively. The CDD database enables scientists to “archive, mine, and collaborate”® around preclinical chemical and biological drug discovery data through a web-based interface. The software helps distributed research groups to safely store and intelligently analyze small molecule, enzyme, cell and animal bioactivity data accumulated from both low-throughput and high-throughput screens. Unique collaboration features and CDD’s community-oriented approach help unite globally dispersed humanitarian efforts against neglected infectious diseases. Similar collaborative strategies are also rapidly gaining prominence in the commercial arena. CDD offers its industrial-strength database software at a price affordable to academic laboratories, research foundations, and small companies.

For further information please contact:

Barry Bunin, PhD
President & CEO
Collaborative Drug Discovery (CDD)
1633 Bayshore Hwy, Suite 342
Burlingame, CA 94010
info(at)collaborativedrug.com

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.”

“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.”

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

BERKELEY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Plexxikon Inc. today announced the issuance of key composition-of-matter patents covering novel compounds discovered through the company’s Scaffold-Based Drug Discovery™ platform. Plexxikon’s pipeline of preclinical and clinical stage product opportunities currently span potential treatments for cardio-renal disease, CNS disorders, inflammation, metabolic disease and oncology. Two of the three recently issued patents (U.S. patents no. 7,498,342 and no. 7,504,509) cover compounds derived from the company’s discovery efforts to target protein kinases for the treatment of multiple indications including oncology and inflammation. The third patent (U.S. patent no. 7,476,746) covers novel compounds from the company’s PPAR (peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor) program yielding novel therapeutic opportunities for metabolic disorders and other diseases.

“We are pleased to be adding these additional patents to our growing and broad intellectual property portfolio,” stated K. Peter Hirth, Ph.D., chief executive officer of Plexxikon. “Plexxikon’s novel approach to drug discovery has enabled the company to advance multiple first-in-class drug candidates which are covered by strong intellectual property, and as a result, to secure significant pharmaceutical industry interest in our programs.”

In contrast to fragment-based approaches, Plexxikon’s platform has generated multiple product opportunities by mining the relatively unexplored chemical space of scaffold-like cores and by utilizing co-crystallography early in the discovery process to guide chemical optimization of these scaffolds. Further, the company has developed methods to make highly selective kinase inhibitors as yet rarely seen. Plexxikon has demonstrated the ability to develop selectivity between two targets with as little as one amino acid difference in their catalytic domains. This capability has created the opportunity for the development of new targeted drugs not only for oncology, but also for chronic disease indications outside oncology where safety hurdles are even higher. To date, Plexxikon’s platform has led to the development of a targeted medicine for the treatment of melanoma, a drug candidate for polycystic kidney disease (PKD), an oral agent for rheumatoid arthritis and a broad spectrum oral diabetic therapeutic, all representing novel agents addressing significant unmet needs.

Dr. Prabha Ibrahim Promoted to Vice President of Chemistry

In other news, Prabha N. Ibrahim, Ph.D., was promoted to the position of vice president of chemistry, bringing over 15 years of experience to her position. As head of chemistry since 2002, she has played a key role in building the company’s synthetic and medicinal chemistry capabilities leading to the discovery of Plexxikon’s novel drug candidates now in the clinic and in preclinical development. Prior to Plexxikon, Dr. Ibrahim was a senior scientist at CV Therapeutics, where she was responsible for the identification and development of preclinical candidates for cardiovascular indications. She also previously worked at Amgen, where she played an integral role in small molecule drug discovery for inflammation therapeutics. Dr. Ibrahim earned her Ph.D. at the University of Victoria, Canada, and was a Welch Foundation Fellow at Rice University in Houston.

Plexxikon Profile

Plexxikon is a leader in the structure-guided discovery and development of novel small molecule pharmaceuticals to treat human disease. The company’s clinical stage programs include PLX4032 for the treatment of melanoma and colorectal cancer, PLX5568 for the treatment of PKD and PLX204 for the treatment of diabetes. Among the company’s preclinical development programs, candidates are being developed for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases.

Plexxikon’s proprietary Scaffold-Based Drug Discovery™ platform is being applied to build a pipeline of product opportunities in multiple therapeutic areas. This discovery process integrates multiple state-of-the-art technologies, including structural screening as one key component that provides a significant competitive advantage over other drug discovery approaches. To date, the company has discovered a portfolio of clinical and preclinical stage compounds in varied disease areas addressing significant unmet needs in each therapeutic category.

Plexxikon is seeking pharmaceutical and biotechnology partners for select collaboration opportunities. For more information, please visit www.plexxikon.com.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 27, 2009) — Metabolites are molecular fingerprints of what your cells are up to and Dr. Arun Sreekumar wants to know the impression made by cancer.

You’ve likely heard about metabolites; your physician probably screens for some known ones such as triglycerides or cholesterol at your annual physical. Scientists suspect we have about 3,000 metabolites that come from our food or are synthesized from different compounds in our bodies.

Dr. Sreekumar, a cancer researcher at the Medical College of Georgia Cancer Center, wants those screens of the blood or urine to also detect early signs of cancers such as leukemia, bladder, kidney and breast when the chance for cure is best.

He’s already begun to identify metabolites that indicate not only the presence of prostate cancer, but its aggressiveness, a tool that could help tailor optimal treatment. The search began in men at risk: those with elevated prostate specific antigen, or PSA, levels. A PSA test along with a digital rectal exam is today’s standard for prostate screening so physicians typically do both in men age 50 and older. But PSA levels are actually better at helping determine if prostate cancer has returned, Dr. Sreekumar says.

Elevated levels of PSA, a protein, are not always predictive of cancer, which means a lot of men get unnecessary biopsies. PSA measurements also can’t distinguish between tumors that have a good outcome versus those with a poor one.

“The physician does not really have the tools in hand to really say that this tumor will spread to other organs or not.” says the Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Cancer Scholar. “We want to find clinical markers that supplement PSA.”

Aggressiveness is a major factor in prostate cancer treatment. In fact some men with slow growing disease likely won’t even need treatment. So he wants to provide a complement of biomarkers that accurately diagnose and categorize the disease then help monitor success of treatment. These early studies indicate a urine test may one day be possible to do just that.

He and colleagues at the University of Michigan reported in the Feb. 12 issue of Nature what appears to be one of the first metabolites implicated in cancer invasion. They looked at 1,126 metabolites in 262 samples taken from men with high PSA levels. They consistently found elevated levels of the amino acid sarcosine in the prostate tissues of men with cancer; levels were highest in what appeared to be the most aggressive tumors.

Sarcosine, a modified form of the amino acid glycine, was a known entity but its function was unclear. Scientists thought it might be a dumping ground for excess methyl groups needed to enable chemical changes of genes, proteins and other body components that can affect what and how much they do.

This process called methylation can be a good thing – like when it’s helping an embryo develop – but when it goes badly, it can cause disease such as cancer. While sarcosine’s dumping role seemed to protect from cancer, the Michigan scientists found its action actually helps induce tumors. In fact, when they added it to prostate cancer cells, the cells became more aggressive. Exactly how that process works is still under study but the findings were pretty consistent.

“When we looked at patients with metastatic disease, sarcosine levels were sky high compared to patients with localized tumors,” says Dr. Sreekumar. “It’s enabling invasion.”

Because cancer and people are both very heterogenous, measures need to be taken in larger population samples, he says. Also, they found a small group of patients with negative biopsies and high sarcosine levels. “We don’t know how many of them have missed cancer,” says Dr. Sreekumar who joined the MCG faculty in February.

These are among the reasons he believes in strength in numbers. “In the real world of biomarkers, you want 100 percent sensitivity. If the patient has cancer, you want to pick it up. We need to have a kind of multiplex test where you can test for say10 different entities and have a greater confidence that what you are stating about the tumor is true. Our goal is to develop such a panel and research on sarcosine is a first step toward achieving this.”

In his new position at MCG, he’s looking to expand the number of metabolites known to be predictive of prostate and other cancers. In prostate cancer, he’s beginning with follow up on other metabolites identified in the Michigan study in which researchers identified a total of six metabolites, including sarcosine, linked to increased tumor progression. A total of 89 metabolites were different in metastatic prostate cancer compared to localized disease.

He’s excited about what metabolites will one day tell cancer physicians and patients but adds that they are just a piece of what our bodies can tell us about a potential cancer growing inside. Scientists also need to continue to look at genes expressed by tumors and the proteins expressed by those genes to get the bigger picture. “It’s basically a systems approach you need to take,” he says.

The young scientist has worked with all those pieces in his relatively short career. He started his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan in1999, when the ability to look at gene expression was new. With his mentor, Dr. Arul M. Chinnaiyan, director of Michigan Center for Translational Pathology, Pathology Research Informatics and Cancer Bioinformatics at Michigan, he helped develop the next step: the ability to look at expression of hundreds of proteins at a time, instead of a handful, an important advance in light of the fact that there are about 1 million proteins. Recently they were among the first to venture into the world of metabolites, which are made by proteins.

“Previous technology was looking at a cell from a narrow perspective and cells never act in isolation, proteins never act in isolation, they always form complexes, act in pathways,” Dr. Sreekumar says.

His inspiration to follow those pathways is a fellow Ph.D. student who died too young and quickly of an aggressive leukemia and the fact that cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide.