RAbD Biotech Presents at 1st Pitch Life Sciences-Philadelphia-September 16, 2014
RAbD is a new biotechnology company founded by Fox Chase Cancer Center investigators Gregory Adams, Ph.D., Matthew Robinson, Ph.D. and Roland Dunbrack, Ph.D. that is focused on the knowledge-based design of antibodies that bind to key functional, often highly conserved and difficult to target epitopes. We are using homology modeling, crystal structures, protein docking and design software and algorithms to drive combinatorial sampling of CDRs to computationally design new antibodies and then express, validate and perform further design in an iterative manner.Brian Smith, Ph.D., MBA is RAbD Biotech’s Business Development Lead.
Contact information for RAbD Biotech:
Website http://rabdbiotech.com/
The overall goal of RAbD is to
“drug the undruggable”
The company using in silico design methods to design to produce novel antibodies and biomimetics. The company is developing a first in class biomimetic, RaD-003, for the treatment of ovarian cancer. Ovarian cancer is one of the most deadly of all women’s cancers, with very low 5 year survival rates. An expected 22,000 US women a year will be diagnosed and expected 16,000 will die every year. Cisplatin/paclitaxel therapy is only approved and effective chemotherapy for ovarian cancer yet resistance develops quickly and is common. RaD-003 targets the MISII receptor (Mullerian Inhibiting Substance Type II Receptor), which is expressed on ovarian cancer cells but not on normal ovarian epithelium.
It has been shown that activation of this receptor by the Mullerian Inhibiting Substance (MIS) has antitumor activity in ovarian cancer.
The MISII receptor had been considered undruggable as
- MIS is too expensive and difficult to produce
- previous attempts to develop therapeutic antibodies ot MISIIR have proven difficult
Therefore, the company used their computational platform to produce a “first in class” chimeric biomimetic to more effectively target and activate MISIIR.
For more information about this meeting and the Mid-Atlantic Bioangels and 1st Pitch please see posting on this site
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This is very insightful. There is no doubt that there is the bias you refer to. 42 years ago, when I was postdocing in biochemistry/enzymology before completing my residency in pathology, I knew that there were very influential mambers of the faculty, who also had large programs, and attracted exceptional students. My mentor, it was said (although he was a great writer), could draft a project on toilet paper and call the NIH. It can’t be true, but it was a time in our history preceding a great explosion. It is bizarre for me to read now about eNOS and iNOS, and about CaMKII-á, â, ã, ä – isoenzymes. They were overlooked during the search for the genome, so intermediary metabolism took a back seat. But the work on protein conformation, and on the mechanism of action of enzymes and ligand and coenzyme was just out there, and became more important with the research on signaling pathways. The work on the mechanism of pyridine nucleotide isoenzymes preceded the work by Burton Sobel on the MB isoenzyme in heart. The Vietnam War cut into the funding, and it has actually declined linearly since.
A few years later, I was an Associate Professor at a new Medical School and I submitted a proposal that was reviewed by the Chairman of Pharmacology, who was a former Director of NSF. He thought it was good enough. I was a pathologist and it went to a Biochemistry Review Committee. It was approved, but not funded. The verdict was that I would not be able to carry out the studies needed, and they would have approached it differently. A thousand young investigators are out there now with similar letters. I was told that the Department Chairmen have to build up their faculty. It’s harder now than then. So I filed for and received 3 patents based on my work at the suggestion of my brother-in-law. When I took it to Boehringer-Mannheim, they were actually clueless.