By Allan Maurer
CARY, NC—Trana Discovery, a biotech startup out of North Carolina State University and the Technical University of Lodz, Poland, has developed a new patented technology that may help defeat a wide range of infectious diseases, including antibiotic resistant staph and the wily AIDS virus.
CEO Steve Peterson, a GlaxoSmithKline alumnus, tells TechJournal South the company’s technology is based on finding inhibitors of tRNA. An information adapter molecule, tRNA decodes the information in DNA used to make specific proteins. Bacteria, fungi and viruses need tRNA to replicate.
Finding compounds to inhibit tRNA used by HIV or even drug resistant staph bacteria could lead to powerful new treatments for those and a wide range of other infectious diseases.
Raising angel round
Founded in 2000, Trana has raised “a modest amount of angel money,” grants, and a loan from the NC Biotech Center. It is a virtual company at this point, with about 11 part time contractors. “We’re all working for deferred salaries, so we’re low overhead,” says Peterson.
While the company is not looking for a venture round, it is in the process of raising another angel round that Peterson says will take Trana through 2009.
Using compounds that disrupt an infective agent’s ability to use tRNA to replicate itself would be a novel approach to fighting drug-resistant bacteria and viruses, Peterson says.
“It’s something the virus would have a difficult time understanding how to resist,” he explains. “When you stop that tRNA template, it will have a difficult time making new virus.”
In the case of drug-resistant infections, such as the dangerous MSRA rampant in many hospitals, tRNA inhibitors work on a completely different mechanism than antibiotics such as penicillin, so the resistance a bug has developed to those treatments will be useless against tRNA interference.
No limit to potential
“We think there is no limit to the number of bacteria and virals we can go after to develop new therapies with this technology,” Peterson says.
Studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have shown that if the tRNA that HIV and other viruses use is removed, it dramatically reduced the amount of new virus made.
“Rather than 100,000 new copies, it could only make something like 10,” says Peterson. That reduced viral load would be much easier to treat.
Trana’s HIV assay is up and running and being marketed, Peterson says. Trana works with the Southern Research Institute in Birmingham, which Peterson says has helped the company win grants and in doing basic yeoman’s work. The company is also developing a staph assay.
Southern Research Institute has discovered six FDA-approved cancer drugs, an unsurpassed record in the pharmaceutical industry. In addition, Southern Research has discovered six drugs that are currently in late-stage development or clinical trials and has evaluated approximately
50 percent of all FDA-approved cancer drugs
“The HIV screen is interesting in that it identified compound classes that are different from that of known antivirals,” said Lucile White, manager of the Southern Research High Throughput Screening Center. “As a consequence, this HTS assay may lead to the identification of leads which inhibit viral replication by a unique mechanism.”
“For those companies that hold collections of bioactive compounds of an unknown mechanism of action, application of our assay could possibly help identify very quickly a totally new class of treatment for HIV,” says Peterson.
Can screen 50,000 compounds daily
“The fact that drug resistance continues to be a major challenge for managing patients with HIV and with increasing numbers of individuals who are being infected, we’re very optimistic that the use of the assay will identify new antivirals to help keep patients one step ahead of the infection.”
The HIV assay can screen up to 50,000 compounds a day and Trana is seeking partners with diverse collections of compounds or those with known bioactivity against HIV but unknown mechanism of action to identify candidates for drug development.
Peterson says Trana’s technology has the potential to provide a rapid diagnostic tool for use in hospitals or even a doctor’s office. Often, patients come to a hospital or doctor with a fever of unknown origin and are difficult to treat unless the specific pathogen infecting them can be identified. Current methods identify one pathogen at a time.
“By the time they get a culture back, it’s 48 hours and the patient is heading south or getting better,” Peterson says, so doctors would love to have get information much more quickly.
“We’re designing a chip that has many bacteria keyed on it for use as an identification tool,” says Peterson.
On the Web: www.tranadiscovery.com;
www.southernresearch.org
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