Sweet success for biotech start-up

A biotech start-up company from the US is hoping to improve existing and even failed drugs simply by adding a bit of sugar.

Knowledge of how sugar affects drug efficacy could be a winning formula for US start-up

Centrose LLC, from Madison, has a proprietary technology that uses sugar molecules to make drugs less toxic and, it says, more effective.

“This idea of drugs that are improved by adding sugars to them is kind of an untapped area,” said Troy Wilson, president and chief executive officer of Intellikine, a San Diego drug development company. Wilson, who has founded several biotech companies, agreed to be on the advisory boards for Centrose.

The company - which has been approved for a $200,000, one-year small business innovation research grant from the National Institutes of Health –has grown from the laboratory of co-founder Jon S. Thorson, a pharmacy professor.
According to a study published in the journal Science, Professor Thorson has been able to exchange sugar molecules attached to drugs in a single reaction.

The ability to automate that sugar exchange gives Centrose the potential to develop a wide range of drugs that fight conditions such as cancer and hard-to-treat infections, Thorson and his co-founders say.

James Prudent, a Centrose co-founder and its chief executive officer, said: “Jon has three papers now showing if he modifies sugars on the antibiotic vancomycin, he can increase strength - he’s shown his new drugs are more potent than the vancomycin.”

If they can scale up the technology and get it to market effectively, Wilson thinks it is a winning formula. “If you can take properties of existing drugs and make them better using this technology, you've got a pretty good recipe for success,” he said.