By Dimitry Voronov
For WisBusiness.com
MADISON — Finding a drug that can regulate sleep and memory is a tall order. However, Charles Landry, a former assistant professor at UW-Madison, and his colleagues may be well on their way to accomplishing just that.
“We discovered a protein involved in fatty acid transport that is important in circadian rhythm,” said Landry, founder of Somnogen Neurologicals.
The human circadian rhythm is essentially a biological clock. The clock is in charge of many physiological processes, and when interrupted, can lead to health consequences associated with the brain. Parkinson’s Disease and many sleep disorders have been associated with an irregularly functioning circadian rhythm.
“The protein is a member of a signaling pathway that one can imagine would be a good target for drugs,” Landry said. “If we can find a drug or molecule that can enhance that protein pathway, we might be able to induce sleep and cognitive ability in patients.”
Landry and his team at Somnogen Neurologicals have tied sleep to cognitive ability, finding a good indication that sleep is critical to maintaining memory and learning motor functions. This concept comes from studies showing that the same parts of the brain are stimulated during sleep and practicing a musical instrument.
“There is a pretty good notion that if we could provide a drug that can enhance sleep, we could also positively influence memory,” Landry said.
However, Landry and his colleagues only have an idea at this point, and it could be a while before the drug is sitting on a shelf next to the Benadryls of the world.
“At our stage, we are trying to figure out what the most marketable component of the idea is,” Landry said. “Do we want to focus on a neurological disorder such as Parkinson’s, or could we develop a drug that simply helps people fall asleep?”
With one marketable goal in mind, Landry knows that it will take specifics to attract the interest of investors. According to him, his team will need to figure out exactly what their drug molecule is as well as how it will work before they start seeing any money.
“The investors love to see products that are tested in human patients,” Landry said. “Unfortunately, human research takes a lot of work and is very complicated when it comes to the Food and Drug Administration and clinical trials.”
Despite seeming to be a long way from pleasing investors, Landry’s team has established a solid springboard for potential medical innovations. Landry’s colleagues, Jerry Yin and Jason Gerstner, identified the “circadian rhythm protein” in mice, and studied it in detail using fruit flies. They found that changing the concentration of the protein in flies dramatically changes the flies’ sleeping patterns and also has an influence on memory.
Despite the hurdles left in the journey to a potentially marketable drug, Landry remains proud of his team’s accomplishments.
“We have a very interesting screening model that we use to identify this protein,” Landry said. “At the very least, we can offer this screening model to companies as a way for them to locate targets of their choice.”
For Landry, it was a long-term goal to start his own biotech company. And although the former professor thinks he did not leave academia to pursue his dream, he admits that it might “work out that way.” While many professors choose to stay at the university to build their companies, the attraction of pursuing different avenues of science is what ultimately influenced Landry’s decision.
Despite the start-up company’s recent success as a semi-finalist in the 2010 Governor’s Business Plan Contest, Landry acknowledges hurdles lie ahead. The team will need to apply for Small Business Innovation Research awards from the NIH, recruit angel investors, partner with pharmaceutical companies, and eventually find venture capitalists to invest in its drug before it can finally hit the stores.
“You very quickly realize that the discovery could lead to something very important but the steps you have to take before you can provide humanity with this wonderful drug are very small and incremental,” Landry said.
— Voronov is a student in the UW-Madison Department of Life Sciences Communication.
