July 2013
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A Note from Jennifer
Dear WIPO Re:Search Members, 

I hope everyone is enjoying the arrival of summer!

 
Visit the WIPO Re:Search website to view the partnerships that have been established between members to date. I'm pleased to share with you that we now have over 25 agreements in place between members, with many more in discussions. In this Snapshot, a recent agreement is highlighted between Sanofi and the Center for World Health & Medicine. 
 
Several meetings this past month have presented opportunities for the BVGH team to meet one-on-one with members. This issue highlights a few of the meetings attended, including Seattle BioMed's Parasitology Conference and the NIAID/NIH Dengue Vaccine Initiative. Konji Sebati, WIPO, traveled to Brazil and met with leaders at FIOCRUZ.
 

I'm extremely pleased to welcome our newest members, the University of Ibadan and 60 Degrees Pharmaceuticals, LLC to WIPO Re:Search.

 

Please forward this Snapshot to your colleagues and reach out to us with any partnering requests or ideas.


Sincerely,

 Jennifer Dent

President, BVGH 

 

specialSpecial Announcement

Don't miss seeing Jennifer Dent'a and BVGH board member, Steven Burrill's, CEO, Burrill & Company, interviews  during  WBBA logo the Washington Biotechnology & Biomedical Association (WBBA) 2013 Life Science Innovation Northwest meeting via their live stream. On July 10th and 11th, a number of influential life science professionals will discuss exciting aspects of the industry in brief one-on-one interviews with Jack Faris, former President and CEO of WBBA. Click here to view the program schedule and to watch the live stream. 
Fiocruz logo

  

Konji Sebati, Director, Department of Traditional Knowledge and Global Challenges, WIPO, met with Jorge Bermudez, Vice President of Production and Innovation, Fundacao Oswaldo Cruz (FIOCRUZ), at FIOCRUZ's Innovation and Production Headquarters, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Konji updated FIOCRUZ on WIPO Re:Search's progress to date, and she and Jorge discussed scaling up FIOCRUZ's involvement in the WIPO Re:Search consortium. 

Konji Sebati and Jorge Bermudez
Konji Sebati and Jorge Bermudez meet at Fiocruz headquarters

  

 

Jennifer was invited to attend the USA-India Chamber of Commerce (USAIC) Biopharma and Healthcare Summit in Boston, MA last month. During the event, she met with a number of WIPO Re:Search Members, including Manos Perros,  Head of Infection iMed, AstraZeneca, Jeffrey Chodakewitz, Senior Vice President,  Global Scientific Strategy, Franchise Head, Infectious Diseases, Merck, and  Muthiah Manoharan , Senior Vice President, Drug Discovery, Alnylam.  Jennifer also had the opportunity to present WIPO Re:Search to a number of potential new Members. 
  

 

 

USAIC panel
USAIC Infectious Diseases panel (from left to right): Moderator, Manos Perros, Head of Infection iMed & Site Head, Boston R&D, AstraZeneca, Brian Dannemann, Senior Director, Johnson & Johnson R&D, Jeffrey Chodakewitz, SVP and Franchise Head - Infectious Diseases, Merck & Co., G.N. Singh, Drug Controller General of India, Central Drug Control Organization, Mark Namchuk, SVP - Research, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and Lynn Marks, SVP - Projects, Clinical Platforms & Sciences, GlaxoSmithKline
Elias Zerhouni USAIC meeting
Elias Zerhouni, President, Global R&D, Sanofi, opened the event with an inspiring presentation

 

Katy Graef, BVGH, attended the 2013 Seattle Parasitology Conference held at Seattle BioMed
June 20th - 21st.  During the event, she presented a poster describing WIPO Re:Search and the Partnership Hub activities of BVGH, and spoke with numerous researchers, including several from Seattle BioMed and the University of Washington. Conference sessions focused on gene expression, vaccine and drug development, and cell biology and chemistry of parasites such as Plasmodium, filarial nematodes, kinetoplastids, and Giardia. 

 

 

 
Roopa Ramamoorth and Katy attended the 2013 Dengue Vaccine Initiative - Consultation on Dengue Vaccines conference held by the NIAID/NIH in Rockville, MD, June 26 - 28th.  Session topics included lessons learned from vaccine developers and immune responses to vaccination and infection.  The event culminated in a  
thoughtful discussion regarding the necessity, feasibility, and ethics of human challenge studies, the proper in vivo models of infection, and the need for consensus regarding whether focus should be on vaccines that protect against infection or disease. During the event, Roopa and Katy met with scientists from several Member organizations, including Nicholas Jackson, Associate Vice President, R&D, Sanofi Pasteur, Pei-Yong Shi, Executive Director/Senior Unit Head - Disease BiologyNovartis Institute for Tropical Diseases, and Stephen Thomas, Director, Viral Diseases Branch, Rafael De La Barrera, Section Head, Viral Vaccines and Assay Development, and W. W. Shanaka Rodrigo, Senior Research Scientist, Viral Diseases Branch, from Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. Roopa and Katy also spoke with Rafi Ahmed, Director, Emory Vaccine Center, and Jens Wrammert, Assistant Professor, Children's Center for Immunology and Vaccines, from Emory University, and Navin Khanna, Group Leader, Mammalian Biology: Recombinant Gene Products, International Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB).  Discussions generated several collaboration ideas that BVGH will be following up to advance.    

 

Roopa, Katy, and Cristina Cassetti
Dengue Vaccine conference co-organizer, Cristina Cassetti, Program Officer, Acute Viral Diseases, Virology Branch, NIH, took a moment from the day's events to pose for a photo with Roopa and Katy
 
New Member Announcements

This month we are pleased to announce two new WIPO Re:Search Members - the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria, and 60 Degrees Pharmaceuticals, LLC, Washington, DC.

 

 
Founded in 1948, the University of Ibadan is Nigeria's oldest university.  The University has a mission to "expand the frontiers of knowledge through provision of excellent conditions for learning and research". There are nine Faculty branches, including Science, Pharmacy, and Technology, and a College of Medicine, which focuses on 
University of Ibadan logo
basic medical sciences, clinical sciences, dentistry, and public health.  Many members in its Pharmacy Faculty branch focus on drug discovery and development of local natural products. Professor Alexander Odaibo, Head of the Parasitology Research Unit, Department of Zoology, at the University of Ibadan stated, "our membership in the WIPO Re: Search Consortium will enhance our capacity to contribute to the control and prevention of neglected tropical diseases in Africa. We look forward to a fruitful collaboration". More information can be found on their website.



60 Degrees Pharmaceuticals, LLC (60P) was founded in 2010 with a mission to discover, develop, and distribute new medicines for NTDs, with the intent of alleviating the suffering and economic burden they cause. Geoff Dow, CEO, Principal, at 60P stated, "60 Degrees Pharmaceuticals is dedicated to the development of cost effective new medicines for neglected diseases. We look forward to leveraging the partnering support of BVGH and the WIPO Re:Search network to accelerate our development efforts". More information about 60P can be found on their website.
 

 
PHCPartnership Hub Central

  


Sanofi, Paris, France, and the Center for World Health & Medicine (CWHM), Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO, signed an MTA that will allow researchers from CWHM to test Sanofi's neutral endopeptidase inhibitors for their use as anti-diarrheals in CWHM's rat diarrheal model. CWHM has been working with PATH Drug Solutions (formerly OneWorld Health) to evaluate NEP inhibitors for their potential as therapeutics for acute secretory diarrhea (ASD), a leading cause of death in children in the developing world. "Gaining access with the help of BVGH to Sanofi's neutral endopeptidase inhibitors to evaluate in our animal model will greatly accelerate our ability to evaluate high quality clinical compounds for their potential to treat ASD." - Marvin Meyers, Director of Medicinal Chemistry, CWHM. 
 

  

 
Roopa and Katy visited the National Institutes of Health to discuss current research and potential for collaborations with several NIH scientists.  Various BVGH initiatives were discussed with Lee Hall, Chief, Malaria Vaccine Development Section, Annie Mo, Program Officer, Preclinical Parasite Vaccine Development, John Rogers, Project Officer, Preclinical Parasite Drug Development, and John Pesce, Product Development Program Manager, from the Parasitology and International Programs Branch. Meetings also took place with Thomas Nutman, Head, Helminth NIAID logo Immunology Section and Clinical Parasitology Unit, to learn about his research projects examining helminth infections.   David Sacks, Chief, Intracellular Parasite Biology Section spoke with Katy and Roopa about his research examining the immunology of leishmania.  BVGH will follow-up on his interest in obtaining African leishmania samples. Lastly, Alan Sher, Chief, Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases, and Bruno Andrade, Visiting Fellow, Immunobiology Section, discussed their tuberculosis research, specifically Immune Reconstitution Inflammatory Syndrome (IRIS) in tuberculosis/HIV co-infections as well as their new projects examining the effects of diabetes on tuberculosis infection. These meetings presented a wealth of information and ideas for new collaborations. 
  

 

HCHighlighted Contributions

 

Featured this month are two AstraZeneca clinical stage compounds, described in the WIPO Re:Search Database, that have potential to be repurposed for neglected diseases. AZ logo 

 

 

ZD4054 is an endothelial A receptor antagonist that was originally evaluated in Phase II studies for prostate cancer.  This class of compounds has also been shown to have efficacy in a mouse cerebral malaria model, preventing cerebral microvascular hemorrhage when co-administered with an artemisinin derivative.

 

Reference: Dai M. et al., (2012) The novel ETA receptor antagonist HJP-272 prevents cerebral microvascular hemorrhage in cerebral malaria and synergistically improves survival in combination with an artemisinin derivative. Life Sci. 91(13-14): 687-692

 

 

AZD8055 is an orally bioavailable mTOR kinase inhibitor that went into Phase I clinical trials targeting tumors.   TOR kinases are also expressed in T. brucei, the causative agent of Human African Trypanosomiasis, and are potential druggable candidates.

 

ReferenceChresta C.M. et al., (2010) AZD8055 is a potent, selective, and orally bioavailable ATP-competitive mammalian target of rapamycin kinase inhibitor with in vitro and in vivo antitumor activity. Cancer Res. 70(1): 288-298

 

Reference: Barquilla A. et al., (2008) Rapamycin inhibits trypanosome cell growth by preventing TOR complex 2 formation. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 105(38): 14579-14584

 
 

 

For more information or to discuss potential collaborations regarding this technology,  

please contact Roopa Ramamoorthi.  

EventsTableUpcoming Global Health Events

Dates
Event Title
Location
Web Link
July 21-26
Gordon Research Conference: Tuberculosis Drug Development
Lucca, Italy
Aug. 4-9
Gordon Research Conference: Molecular and Cell Biology of Malaria
Lucca, Italy

Are you attending a global health event?
Do you have a Research Request to highlight in the Snapshot?

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