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A University of Massachusetts Medical School research team says it will take $4 million to develop a drug that can stop fatal blood clots by controlling a patient’s appropriate cell communications.
Cell membranes have special receptors that can detect if there is a virus or some other outside threat attacking the body. Once the cell receptor is stimulated, it communicates with proteins within the cells so they can respond to the perceived attack. “This is similar to the way a human uses a telephone to report a burglar to the police,” said Alexander Sigalov, research assistant professor at the department of pathology at UMass Medical.
For years, how the membrane receptor communicated with the cell was a mystery, but the UMass researchers now claim to understand the signaling mechanism. “This means in many cases we can modulate the signal or we can interrupt the signal,” he said. This insight is the basis of the so-called “signaling chain homoligomerization (SCHOOL)” technology platform. As a first application for the platform, Sigalov wants to develop an anti-blood-clotting, or anti-thrombotic, drug.
Doctors now treat heart attack, stroke, and vascular disease using antithrombotics that are prone to cause life-threatening, uncontrolled bleeding, said Sigalov. The researchers want to raise $4 million to use the platform to create a SCHOOL-based anti-thrombotic that could prevent blood clots from forming, while avoiding hemorrhages. The drug would appeal to large pharmaceutical companies, or to medical device makers who could apply it to their stents. The $4 million raised could make the SCHOOL-based drug ready for Phase 2 clinical trial and permit an investor exit by the end of 2014. He estimated that anti-thrombotic drugs and devices will be a $25 billion market by 2020.
Using the cell signaling in the membrane is a unique approach to ant-ithrombotics, noted Matthew Gounis, professor of radiology at UMass Medical School. He is familiar with Sigalov’s work.
Although more research is necessary, so far, the approach has demonstrated high potential and the early data is impressive, said Gounis.
However, this application would be just the beginning of potential uses of this new signaling platform, Sigalov said.
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