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Actinobac Biomed, Inc., is a new company that focuses its activities on the development of pharmaceutical technologies based on agents that target Leukocyte Function Antigen-1 (LFA-1).
Its lead product, Leukotoxin, is a bacterial toxin that specifically targets white blood cells. In addition to its use as an effective targeted therapy agent for the treatment of hematologic malignancies, abundant evidence in literature suggests that Leukotoxin, or a derived product, can effectively be used to treat infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, as well as many autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, type 1 diabetes, Lupus and psoriasis.
Therefore, the company will direct its efforts in three strategic areas. The first, and highest priority, is the development of Leukotoxin as a protein therapeutic for the treatment of hematologic malignancies. The second will focus on the use of Leukotoxin and derived therapeutic peptides or mimetics for the treatment of significant diseases other than hematologic malignancies, including infections and autoimmune diseases. The third area represents an early-stage drug discovery program with Magellan BioScience that will maintain a healthy pipeline of novel therapeutic agents.
For more information, visit www.actinobac.com. |
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CellXplore is a new, privately held biotechnology company engaged in the development of biomarker-based in vitro diagnostic assays for cancer, initially focusing on breast cancer. Although mammography is an effective screening test for early detection, there is a need for a simple, reliable and sensitive biomarker-based in vitro assay that can be used to stage and characterize breast cancer.
The company was formed to commercialize groundbreaking discoveries demonstrating up-regulation of the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway in cancerous breast tissue, providing the capability for the noninvasive detection of breast cancer and the ability to monitor the efficacy of chemotherapeutic interventions.
CellXplore’s platform technology is not restricted to breast cancer in vitro diagnostics alone, nor is it restricted to cancer diagnostics alone. Beyond cancer, CellXplore is already investigating whether similar blood sample biomarkers can be identified for the early diagnosis of several major debilitating diseases such as muscle wasting, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and inflammatory diseases. |
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Durin Technologies is a start-up company focused on the development of a blood test to determine risk and diagnose Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
The company’s research centers on the fact that brain-reactive autoantibodies common in human blood are involved in the degenerative mechanism of AD, a concept gaining support in the scientific community. Its research shows that these autoantibodies can readily penetrate through defects in the blood brain barrier that result from degenerative conditions common to blood vessels in the elderly. Once these autoantibodies leak into the brain tissue, they selectively bind to neurons that are most vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease pathology and accelerate disease progression.
The founder of Durin Technologies, Dr. Robert Nagele, hopes that these results will spark development of new therapies aimed at lowering blood levels of these damaging autoantibodies and/or preserving the integrity of the blood brain barrier, both of which could slow disease progression or circumvent this devastating illness altogether.
Supported by clinical trial results, the success in these products will fulfill an unmet need in the diagnostic pharmaceutical industry. |
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Longevica Pharmaceuticals, Inc., is a privately held biotechnology company that is developing novel, proprietary drugs with potential use in the treatment of cancer, degenerative diseases and age-related disorders. The company was formed primarily to commercialize the discoveries demonstrating that inactivation of an alpha kinase, EF2 kinase, protects normal (non-cancer) cells and tissues from the toxic effect of chemotherapy or radiation treatments.
Despite the tremendous progress in drug cancer chemotherapy, most of the drugs used today have a pronounced toxicity effect, killing normal cells along with cancer cells. The work being done by scientists at Longevica may lead to a novel approach in cancer therapy that can significantly improve the efficiency of the current methods of cancer treatment.
The discoveries are also expected to be helpful in treating patients suffering from ischemia, stroke and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease by protecting cells and tissues from stress damage.
July 28, 2010 update:
Foundation Venture Capital Group recently sold its equity interest in Longevica Pharmaceuticals, Inc., to Rostock International Ltd., a subsidiary of the Rostock Group, a Moscow (Russia) headquartered global investment firm focused on investments in breakthrough technologies that can radically increase human lifespan and improve quality of life.
The sale to Rostock International represents a substantial return on investment in less than 18 months, demonstrating the value of forming and developing companies around the scientific activities of researchers at UMDNJ.
For more information, click here. |
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Snowdon, Inc., is a drug discovery and development company that is focused on three major therapeutic areas with substantial market potential—cancer, acute and chronic pain and infectious diseases. In each of these therapeutic areas, Snowdon has discovered prospective drug candidates that address the urgent need for safe and effective medicine.
Snowdon's proven discovery platform is built for speed, economy and maximum success rate. They employ a battery of proprietary computational tools to rapidly identify high-value molecules from their fast in silico library of vendor-available compounds, which can then be procured for initial biological proof of concept evaluation studies.
Visit Snowdon's web site: www.snowdonpharma.com. |
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