MADISON, WI. March 30, 2009 – A drug development program aimed at enhancing an effective yet toxic anti-fungal drug will now receive additional funding by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID). Centrose, a biopharmaceutical company focused on making drugs better using its CarboConnectTM Platform, received notice today from the NIAID that its anti-fungal drug program will receive $280,000 in grant funding. Earlier this year, Centrose disclosed that it has a total of five CarboConnect related patents, further securing its position in exploiting the power of specialized sugars.
Opportunistic fungal infections are a major problem in immunocompromised patients. In recent years, the number of patients with severe immunosuppression has risen dramatically as a result of advances in the treatment of HIV/AIDS, cancer, and other conditions. Many strains of fungi are developing resistance to current drugs. As this public health problem reaches a crisis, the available drugs have become inadequate to meet the task. Only a few antifungals have received approval in the United States, and these agents have notable limitations, including narrow spectrum of activity, toxicity (side effects), and emerging fungal resistance.
This latest funding opportunity will allow Centrose to enhance a prescribed anti-fungal drug where resistance is not a major issue. Yet the drug has numerous drawbacks such as toxicity and route of administration concerns. For the past few years, improved formulations have been on the market but their high cost can be prohibitive to many patients. Today the anti-fungal market is estimated to be approximately $4.4 Billion. Centrose and now the NIAID believe that CarboConnect could greatly enhance such anti-fungal medicines.
“We are happy to see that the NIAID agrees that our sugar enhancement technology may play a significant role in developing new drugs to help fight fungal infections,” said Richard Hutchinson, Ph.D., chief scientific officer of Centrose. “This funding will not only allow us to find better anti-fungal medicines, but as we begin to publically present our data, we anticipate follow on funding to get these novel drugs to the clinic”.
In 2007, Centrose exclusively licensed a portfolio of patents and patent applications that use sugars to lower the toxic effects and increase the potency of drugs. Since then, the company has been building additional value in the CarboConnect platform by showing that more and more drugs can be enhanced by attaching sugars. Sugars have the potential to enhance many drug properties but until the discovery of CarboConnect, a commercial method to attach the sugars was missing.
About Centrose LLC
Centrose, a Madison Wisconsin based biopharmaceutical company, is applying scientific breakthroughs in sugar chemistry to the discovery, development and commercialization of small molecule therapeutics. Centrose employs CarboConnectTM technology for the attachment of any sugar molecule to any compound. Sugars are involved in almost every aspect of biology and play fundamental roles in drug action. Several small-molecule drugs like erythromycin (a commonly used antibiotic) or doxorubicin (a commonly used anticancer) contain sugar linkages. It is the sugar linkages that bestow drug activity. Modifying existing small-molecule drugs with sugars has been shown to improve drug activity. Centrose’s proprietary sugar technology enables the rapid enhancement of a wide variety of important drugs in a one-step process with manufacturing scalability. Centrose owns a broad set of patents and patent applications issued and filed by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and The Sloan Kettering Institute.
Contacts:
James Prudent, Ph.D.
Chief Executive Officer,
Centrose LLC
(608) 209-8933
