Universities team with nonprofit to develop drugs

A collaboration unveiled last week hopes to find a new formula for converting promising molecules into investment-worthy drugs. Comprised of several leading California universities and the nonprofit research institute SRI International, the PharmaSTART consortium will help the universities conduct the early testing of molecules usually performed by non-academic institutions, including biotech and pharmaceutical companies. Universities traditionally do not have experience with the practical nature of converting a laboratory discovery into a marketable product, but SRI does, said Glenn Rice, vice president of SRI's biosciences division. To help its partners carry out early testing of new molecules themselves, SRI will work with researchers at Stanford University and the Universities of California in San Francisco and San Diego (UCSD) to devise a "drug development roadmap," describing the steps they need to take to determine if a drug is worth testing in humans, Rice said. Although SRI may be eventually be hired by its partners to carry out some of these early tests he said that this is not a term of the consortium agreement.Rice added that if molecules pass early benchmarks, they may become more attractive to traditional funders, whose "deep pockets" could invest the big bucks needed to get them approved for human use.Many experts agree that funding of early tests has dried up of late, particularly for drugs with no shot at a big payoff. "The major drug companies don't want to even start a trial if, at the end of that, they're not going to have a huge seller, blockbuster size," said Floyd Bloom, chairman of the neuropharmacology department at Scripps Research Institute and chairman of the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.However, Bill Greene, a principal at life sciences investor MPM Capital, told The Scientist that not all big pharma money is being diverted from early research, and particularly promising drugs, or those that have the potential to treat many people, continue to receive early testing funds from traditional investors. "As in many other things, there's always room at the top," Greene noted.That said, Greene agreed that potentially less lucrative drugs are receiving less financial support to get through the "difficult phase" of initial testing. "I think that PharmaSTART has the potential to really help by focusing on targeting that [early] phase in a drug's life," he said.Getting enough money is always difficult, but Bloom believes that the hardest part of drug discovery involves the actual discovery—finding a molecule that may represent a viable new drug—a problem PharmaSTART will not solve.Jerrold Olefsky, UCSD professor of medicine and a member of the PharmaSTART steering committee, agreed that finding a good molecule is hard to do. For example, once a researcher identifies a molecule that treats diabetes, he said, what she finds may not represent the most effective form of that molecule, and she often needs help from other experts to provide the necessary chemical tweaking to turn that template into a disease-killing drug. "And that's a thing SRI does really well," he said. However, SRI's Rice noted that the institute would have to vamp up its capabilities in the chemical tweaking known as medicinal chemistry if it will be repeatedly called upon to perform this service. Currently, SRI has approximately 20 medicinal chemists, he said.Money is at the heart of the issue PharmaSTART is meant to address, yet the universities will need extra funds to take on the task of early testing themselves, Bloom noted. "That's going to take a lot of money, and I don't know where they're going to get the money to pay for some of those things."While money is always a problem, Olefsky said that he is not concerned. For instance, he noted that potential financial backers—who will likely provide both public and private money—may be more excited to fund a project in which three of the nation's top universities are working together. "I have no doubt that the funding is out there," Olefsky said.

Universities team with nonprofit to develop drugs

Collaborators say a new formula is needed to turn neglected molecules into treatments

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