| From: donpat | 7/19/2005 1:38:05 PM | | | | | | Purdue focuses on cancer research
11:44 AM July 19, 2005
Associated Press
Purdue University is creating a new cancer research center where scientists from wide-ranging fields will exchange ideas to develop powerful new therapies.
The Oncological Sciences Center announced today eventually will be located at Purdue’s Discovery Park research complex in West Lafayette, where faculty members work on new technologies that can be spun off into biotech companies.
The oncology center is one of four newly created Discovery Park centers that will receive $2.5 million each over the next three years under a $10 million gift from the Lilly Endowment.
Marietta Harrison, the center’s interim director, said scientists, engineers and experts in communication and human behavior will come together under its aegis to work on ideas for early detection, prevention and treatment of cancer.
A key part of the interdisciplinary approach will be nanotechnology, which involves manipulating single atoms and molecules to create tiny machines and devices.
Already, Harrison said Purdue researchers are working on projects aimed at spotting tiny tumors and distinguishing normal cells from cancer cells. Early tumor detection can allow doctors to stop cancer in patients before it spreads.
The center also will fund a nanotech project that researchers hope can use tiny, constructed “particles” that, when injected into a patient, would be capable of seeking out cancer cells and injecting them with a drug that kills them.
“You need all kinds people with different kinds of expertise to put something like that together,” Harrison said. “It’s engineers and biologists and now chemists — so you can see how hugely important the interdisciplinary approach is going to be.”
The new center’s projects will be scattered across Purdue’s campus for now, but fund-raising is under way to build a high-tech home for the center at Discovery Park, she said.
Harrison said the center’s projects might use laboratory space at the park’s Bindley Biosciences Center and the Birck Nanotechnology Center, which opens Oct. 8.
David Johnson, the chief executive of BioCrossroads, a public-private partnership working to invigorate Indiana’s life sciences industry, said the new Purdue center will spur the state’s efforts to create technology-based, high-growth businesses.
“Two years ago when we did a targeting study of the best areas for Indiana’s life sciences future, cancer research came up time and again as one of the most promising pursuits we could have as a state,” Johnson said. “Seeing Purdue come into this is very, very exciting.”
Over the past few years, Discovery Park has attracted more than $109 million in sponsored research and $100 million in donations for building construction. Research conducted at the park has helped form eight startup companies.
indystar.com |
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| To: jmhollen who wrote (22) | 7/19/2005 4:50:16 PM | | From: donpat | | | | Indeed!
My (our) usual method is to get in when there are two or three zeros to the right of the decimal place. In this case it didn't happen! I don't think they gave us that opportunity!
We must make hay while the sun shines and it is shining bright on NNVC, IMHO! |
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| From: donpat | 7/19/2005 10:27:01 PM | | | | | | UCLA Chemists Create Nano Valve
Date: July 15, 2005
Contact: Stuart Wolpert ( stuartw@college.ucla.edu )
Phone: 310-206-0511
UCLA chemists have created the first nano valve that can be opened and closed at will to trap and release molecules. The discovery, federally funded by the National Science Foundation, will be published July 19 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"This paper demonstrates unequivocally that the machine works," said Jeffrey I. Zink, a UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry, a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA, and a member of the research team. "With the nano valve, we can trap and release molecules on demand. We are able to control molecules at the nano scale.
"A nano valve potentially could be used as a drug delivery system," Zink said.
"The valve is like a mechanical system that we can control like a water faucet," said UCLA graduate student Thoi Nguyen, lead author on the paper. "Trapping the molecule inside and shutting the valve tightly was a challenge. The first valves we produced leaked slightly."
"Thoi was a master nano plumber who plugged the leak with a tight valve," Zink said.
This nano valve consists of moving parts — switchable rotaxane molecules that resemble linear motors designed by California NanoSystems Institute director Fraser Stoddart's team — attached to a tiny piece of glass (porous silica), which measures about 500 nanometers, and which Nguyen is currently reducing in size. Tiny pores in the glass are only a few nanometers in size.
"It's big enough to let molecules in and out, but small enough so that the switchable rotaxane molecules can block the hole," Zink said.
The valve is uniquely designed so one end attaches to the opening of the hole that will be blocked and unblocked, and the other end has the switchable rotaxanes whose movable component blocks the hole in the down position and leaves it open in the up position. The researchers used chemical energy involving a single electron as the power supply to open and shut the valve, and a luminescent molecule that allows them to tell from emitted light whether a molecule is trapped or has been released.
Switchable rotaxanes are molecules composed of a dumbbell component with two stations between which a ring component can be made to move back and forth in a linear fashion. Stoddart, who holds UCLA's Fred Kavli Chair in nanosystems sciences, has already shown how these switchable rotaxanes can be used in molecular electronics. Stoddart's team is now adapting them for use in the construction of artificial molecular machinery.
"The fact that we can take a bistable molecule that behaves as a switch in a silicon-based electronic device at the nanoscale level and fabricate it differently to work as part of a nano valve on porous silica is something I find really satisfying about this piece of research," Stoddart, said. "It shows that these little pieces of molecular machinery are highly adaptable and resourceful, and means that we can move around in the nanoworld with the same molecular tool kit and adapt it to different needs on demand."
In future research, they will test how large a hole they can block, to see whether they can get larger molecules, like enzymes, inside the container; they are optimistic.
The research team also includes Hsian-Rong Tseng, a former postdoctoral scholar in chemistry who is now an assistant professor of molecular and medical pharmacology in UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine; Paul Celestre, a former undergraduate student in Stoddart's laboratory; Amar Flood, a former UCLA researcher in Stoddart's supramolecular chemistry group who is now an assistant professor of chemistry at Indiana University; and Yi Liu, a former UCLA graduate student who is now a postdoctoral scholar at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla.
"Our team and Fraser's have very different areas of expertise," Zink said. "By combining them and working together we were able to make something new that really works."
Stoddart has noted that it is only in the past 100 years that humankind has learned how to fly. Prior to the first demonstration of manned flight, there were many great scientists and engineers who said it was impossible.
"Building artificial molecular machines and getting them to operate is where airplanes were a century ago," Stoddart said. "We have come a long way in the last decade, but we have a very, very long way to go yet to realize the full potential of artificial molecular machines."
The nano valve is much smaller than living cells. Could a cell ingest a nano valve combined with bio-molecules, and could light energy then be used to release a drug inside a cell? Stay tuned.
newsroom.ucla.edu |
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| From: Lateott | 7/20/2005 12:02:57 PM | | | | | | Hey Guys,
Not trying to bash or anything of that nature. But are we concerned about the phrase "...has exclusive license in perpetuity for technologies developed by Theracour Pharma..."?
Only reason I ask is that I'm still licking my fresh wounds from HTDS.
Are we aware of any termination clauses... etc?
Any thoughts would be appreciated?
Thanks,
Lateott |
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| To: Lateott who wrote (25) | 7/20/2005 2:21:27 PM | | From: donpat | | | | My thoughts on Theracour Pharma.
The US patent issued to "Inventors: Watterson; Arthur C. (Nashua, NH); Danprasert; Kunya (Bangkapi, TH); Diwan; Anil (West Haven, CT)"
I think that Theracour Pharma was set up to market that patent:
Message 21480742
Diwan is the only inventor now at NNVC. He is also a principle at Theracour Pharma:
"Anil and his partners have formed a new company, TheraCour Pharma, Inc., with private investor financing to commercialize these materials and also to develop new drugs based on them."
Message 21480615
It looks to me that this approach rewards all inventors for the invention by the royalties received and split however agreed upon, likely equally among the three - the three in Theracour, while the vehicle to commercialize the stuff is NNVC with but one inventor in the picture - Diwan - along with shareholders who will be rewarded as NNVC prospers. It could well have been the case that while Diwan was keen to get involved in the commercialization opportunities the other inventors were not, for whatever reasons - perhaps they preferred to stay wherever they are presently, like in the academic community, perhaps.
As I said - this is my take. The company could, and should, perhaps, clarify this question fully. Especially regarding any cancellation provisions of this perpetual licence by Theracour Pharma. As you said, once bitten, twice shy!!!
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| From: archimedest | 7/21/2005 9:09:47 AM | | | | | | | Very interesting article on the NNVC site from NanoBiotech news. It gives you a good idea of their strategy going forward. I expect this stock to continue climbing for a while. |
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| To: archimedest who wrote (28) | 7/21/2005 9:29:19 AM | | From: donpat | | | | NanoViricides' President Discusses New HIV Drugs and Company Goals in Interview with NanoBiotech News
Thursday July 21, 8:53 am ET
Provides In-Depth Interview of the NanoViricides Story
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 21, 2005--NanoViricides, Inc. (Pink Sheets:NNVC - News), has announced the online availability of a feature article about NanoViricides, Inc. in the July 13, 2005 edition of NanoBiotech News. In the article, Dr. Diwan discusses NanoViricides' uniqueness and drug development goals as it prepares to compete in the multi-billion-dollar bio-pharmaceutical marketplace.
The article can be viewed free of charge by visiting nanoviricides.com
[[ARTICLE here: nanoviricides.com ]]
Information about NanoBiotech News can be found at nanobiotechnews.com
About NanoViricides - nanoviricides.com
NanoViricides, Inc. is a development stage company that is creating special purpose nanomaterials for viral therapy. NanoViricides, Inc. has exclusive license in perpetuity for technologies developed by Theracour Pharma for the five virus types: HIV, HCV, Herpes, Asian (bird) flu and Influenza. A NanoViricide(TM) is a nanoparticle that contains an encapsulated active pharmaceutical ingredient and targets it to a specific type of virus. When a NanoViricide(TM) drug particle enters the patient's blood stream, it attacks and immobilizes circulating virus particles. Once this is done, the active pharmaceutical ingredient is injected into the virus by the NanoViricide(TM) particle, destroying it. The company plans to develop novel NanoViricide(TM) drugs first against HIV, and anticipates that it will license the products to major pharmaceutical companies.
This press release contains forward-looking statements which reflect the Company's current expectation regarding future events. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties. Actual events could differ materially and substantially from those projected herein and depend on a number of factors including the success of the Company's research and development strategy, the availability of adequate financing, the successful and timely completion of clinical studies and the uncertainties related to the regulatory process.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact:
NanoViricides, Inc., New York
Leo Ehrlich, 917-853-6440
leo@nanoviricides.com
or
Anil R. Diwan, Ph.D.
adiwan@snet.net
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: NanoViricides, Inc.
biz.yahoo.com |
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| To: donpat who wrote (26) | 7/21/2005 12:29:48 PM | | From: Lateott | | | | Thanks donpat,
Looking to recoup the flogging I took on HTDS and just trying to to a little DD. Well, let me rephrase, hoping to suck a little DD out of you guys. Your comments, as always, are much appreciated.
Thanks again. |
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