Sweet success for biotech start-up
June 22, 2007
A biotech start-up company from the US is hoping to improve existing and even failed drugs simply by adding a bit of sugar.
A biotech start-up company from the US is hoping to improve existing and even failed drugs simply by adding a bit of sugar.
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| Knowledge of how sugar affects drug efficacy could be a winning formula for US start-up |
“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.
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