Chapel Hill, NC G-Zero Therapeutics, an RTP company started in 2008 based on technologies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been awarded a $3 million Phase II Small Business Innovation Research Grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health.
The grant will fund commercialization of technology developed by UNC professor of medicine and genetics, Norman Sharpless, MD, to protect patients from cellular damage caused by radiation or cancer chemotherapy.
Sharpless, who is associate director for translational research at UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, leads a team that has been testing drugs to inhibit enzymes involved in cell division. His group showed that treatment with certain of these agents causes specific groups of bone marrow cells to temporarily stop dividing (which they termed 'pharmacological quiescence' or PQ).
Scientists have demonstrated that cells which are not dividing are resistant to agents that damage DNA, like radiation and chemotherapy. Therefore, by inducing PQ with potent and selective inhibitors of cell division, Sharpless has shown mice are protected from lethal doses of radiation and chemotherapy. Previously, Sharpless' lab has shown that the induction of PQTM even up to 20 hours after radiation exposure protects mice from a lethal dose of radiation. As opposed to existing technologies to prevent radiation or chemotherapy toxicity, PQ protects all the normal cells of blood, including platelets, red cells and white cells.
This technology has been licensed to G-Zero Therapeutics, which will use this new funding to further commercialize these discoveries. The research was also funded by an innovation grant from the University Cancer Research Fund.
"Our goal is a simple, non-toxic pill that decreases radiation toxicity even when given after radiation exposure. We believe this approach coul
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| Contact: Ellen de Graffenreid edegraff@med.unc.edu 919-962-3405 University of North Carolina School of Medicine Source:Eurekalert |
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