Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence (LPBI) Group

Biomolecular Condensates: A new approach to biology originated @MIT – Drug Discovery at DewPoint Therapeutics, Cambridge, MA gets new leaders, Ameet Nathwani, MD (ex-Sanofi, ex-Novartis) as Chief Executive Officer and Arie Belldegrun, PhD (ex-Kite Therapeutics) on R&D

Curator & Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

Hooked by the science, Arie Belldegrun joins a group of influentials who believe Dewpoint may have the key to the next big thing in biotech

A new approach to biology

“The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” Marcel Proust

Starting with the study of P granules in C.elegans embryos in 2009, Tony Hyman, working with his collaborators like Frank Julicher, Cliff Brangwynne, Simon Alberti, Mike Rosen, and Rohit Pappu, began to unravel the mysteries of biomolecular condensates. These scientists realized that P granules behave like liquid droplets that form by phase separation (think of oil droplets in salad dressing) and called them condensates.

In subsequent studies, they found to their surprise that many compartments inside cells had the behavior of condensates: they are liquid-like and form by phase separation.

Inspired by the work of Tony and his colleagues, Richard Young, Phillip Sharp, and Arup Chakraborty at MIT applied these approaches to the study of gene expression, similarly shedding light on many important questions in gene control.

Rick Young on condensates and gene control.

Tony Hyman on how cells form compartments. (From LatestThinking.org via CC BY 4.0; trimmed for length.)

Foundational Papers in Biomolecular Condensates

Germline P granules are liquid droplets that localize by controlled dissolution/condensation (Science, June 2009)

Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation in Biology (Annual Review of Cell & Developmental Biology, Oct 2014)

A Liquid-to-Solid Phase Transition of the ALS Protein FUS Accelerated by Disease Mutation (Cell, Aug 2015)

Biomolecular condensates: organizers of cellular biochemistry (Nature Review Cell Biology, Feb 2017)

A Phase Separation Model for Transcriptional Control. (Cell, March 2017)

Transcription Factors Activate Genes through the Phase-Separation Capacity of Their Activation Domains (Cell, Nov 2018)

Press releases and Dewpoint in the news

Other related article published in this Online Open Access Scientific Journal include: 

Economic Potential of a Drug Invention (Prof. Zelig Eshhar, Weitzman Institute, registered the patent) versus a Cancer Drug in Clinical Trials: CAR-T as a Case in Point, developed by Kite Pharma, under Arie Belldegrun, CEO, acquired by Gilead for $11.9 billion, 8/2017.

https://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2017/10/04/economic-potential-of-a-drug-invention-prof-zelig-eshhar-weitzman-institute-registered-the-patent-versus-a-cancer-drug-in-clinical-trials-car-t-as-a-case-in-point-developed-by-kite-pharma-unde/