Oct 9 2008
Trana Discovery, Inc., a drug discovery technology company, today announced plans for the development of a new High-Throughput Screening (HTS) assay capable of selectively identifying compounds that inhibit the reproduction of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria through a unique mechanism of action: the target pathogen's ability to use transfer RNA (tRNA) in replication. Final development and commercialization of the assay is made possible by a $250,000 Small Business Research Loan awarded to the company by the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. Trana will engage with several local biotechnology resources to advance the assay to HTS status, opening the way for the discovery, development, and market availability of critically needed new anti-infectives for the treatment of Staphylococcus aureus infections.
Staphylococcus aureus (staph) is becoming a major public health concern. A particular form of the bacteria, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), has become resistant to most antibiotics. Staph infections can become serious or life threatening. Entirely different classes of antibiotics are likely to be necessary to overcome ongoing resistance issues that make these infections so difficult to treat.
The new staph assay is currently under early development and is designed to identify compounds that inhibit the essential use of tRNAArg by the bacteria. Initial experiments indicate that an assay that uses a fluorescein-labeled tRNAArg oligonucleotide as the tool and the S. aureus ribosome as the target is feasible and can be scaled to a high-throughput screening (HTS) format. The project is intended to advance this assay to full HTS functionality, rendering it immediately available and highly attractive for licensing to pharmaceutical companies.
Development of the assay will engage the expertise of several biotechnology resources located in the Triangle. The current plan includes the Department of Microbiology at North Carolina State University who will perform the microbiological testing; RTI International will complete the cytotoxicity screening; and the Medicinal Chemistry division of the University of North Carolina School of Pharmacy will develop the molecular model(s). In addition, the High-Throughput Screening Center at Southern Research in Birmingham, AL will conduct the compound screening work following optimization of the assay and validation of the HTS format.
North Carolina has invested more than $200 million in biotechnology infrastructure through the Biotechnology Center, including more than $17 million awarded to more than 150 North Carolina startup biotechnology companies since 1989. The Small Business Research Loans support applied research projects critical to the development of technologies marked for commercialization.
"The Biotechnology Center has been and continues to be an excellent partner in our efforts to discover new classes of anti-infectives,” said Steve Peterson, CEO of Trana Discovery. "Successful outcome of this project will validate the role of our technology as a drug discovery tool for new antibacterial agents, which in turn can be applied to virtually any other bacterial pathogen against which new treatments are needed."
The company expects to complete the S. aureus HTS project in approximately six months.