SBIR Grant Awarded to Advanced Life Sciences
for Proteomics Research
Proteomics investigation in collaboration
with Argonne National Laboratory
to focus on treating diseases such as Alzheimer's, type-2 diabetes
Woodridge, IL, June 24, 2003 - The National Institutes of Health
has awarded a Small Business Innovation Research Grant (SBIR)
to Advanced Life Sciences (ALS) for a promising proteomics-based
technology that may eventually lead to treatment of diseases that
arise from the faulty aggregation of proteins, such as Alzheimer's,
Down's syndrome, adult onset type-2 diabetes and amyloidosis,
announced Michael T. Flavin, Ph.D., ALS's chief executive officer.
Advanced Life Sciences expects to receive funding from the SBIR
Grant beginning in the third quarter 2003.
Advanced Life Sciences will be conducting a portion of their
research in collaboration with researchers at Argonne National
Laboratory, where ALS in-licensed the basic technology. "This
grant will help ALS to further elucidate the science behind faulty
protein-protein aggregation. We are optimistic it will lead to
development of a platform technology that will spawn multiple
effective therapeutic agents to treat a variety of protein aggregation
diseases," said Dr. Flavin.
The focus of the grant, entitled "Design & Synthesis
of Novel Agents to Treat Amyloidosis" will be the development
of novel small molecules, which are intended to interfere in vivo
with specific protein-protein interactions and to identify their
binding sites. "The formation of protein fibrils, or bunches,
is a component of many untreatable protein aggregation diseases,"
said Dr. Ze-Qi Xu, ALS's chief scientific officer. "One strategy
for minimizing protein aggregation is to stabilize the proteins,
or disassociate the protein aggregates, with small molecules.
We intend to use high-throughput screening to identify naturally
occurring and synthetic small molecules that can be effective
against fibril formation."
Advanced Life Sciences is a privately held biopharmaceutical
company engaged in the discovery, development and commercialization
of novel drugs in the therapeutic areas of infection, cancer and
inflammation using its platform in natural products and chemical
proteomics coupled with expertise in drug development. (www.advancedlifesciences.com)
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