Accelerator Corporation, a privately–held biotechnology investment and
development company today announced the formation of a new company, Mirina Corporation,
focused on developing therapeutics using Minor Groove Binder technology to affect
cellular processes involving microRNAs. Mirina, has exclusively licensed the
technology from Nanogen, Inc.
for use in therapeutics and is Accelerator’s first investment in a technology
spinout from a publicly traded biotechnology company. The syndicate of investors
leading the Series A investment in Mirina included Alexandria Real Estate Equities,
Amgen Ventures, ARCH Venture Partners, OVP Venture Partners and WRF Capital.
Mirina’s technology is based upon Nanogen’s proprietary Minor Groove
Binder technology for making novel microRNA (miRNA) therapeutics with enhanced
properties. MiRNAs are a recently identified mechanism for gene regulation.
Recent breakthroughs and potential applications of technologies to affect miRNAs
and to use miRNA-based compounds as therapeutic agents have attracted interest
from major biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies and resulted in several
high-profile partnerships and mergers and acquisitions activity. By improving
the properties of miRNA therapeutics, Mirina’s technology presents promising
potential for treating a wide range of diseases, including cancers, infectious
diseases and various metabolic disorders.
Nanogen has developed and patented novel methods for preparing oligonucleotides
appended with Minor Groove Binding (MGB) agents---chemical groups that have
high affinity for helical DNA or RNA. This technology has been exploited by
Nanogen for molecular diagnostics and has also been licensed by Applied Biosystems
and ThermoFisher for research applications in Real Time PCR. By incorporating
the MGB technology into miRNA therapeutics, Mirina’s novel MGB-oligonucleotide
compounds are anticipated to exhibit superior properties, such as enhanced target
selectivity and significantly better potency.
David McElligott, Ph.D., formerly the Senior Director of Drug Discovery of
ICOS, will be the Vice President of Research and Development for Mirina. During
his 10 years at ICOS, Dr. McElligott coordinated the discovery and clinical
entry of numerous early stage products. Prior to his ICOS employment, Dr. McElligott
was an Assistant Professor at Scripps Research Institute. Collaborations with
Nanogen will be overseen by Walt Mahoney, Ph.D., Vice President of Research
and Development, who has led the efforts to develop the proprietary MGB technology.
”Working with Accelerator to license our technology to this new venture
is an exciting new area for Nanogen,” said Howard Birndorf, CEO of Nanogen,
Inc. “Our MGB technology has been widely licensed for research and diagnostic
applications. Extending its utility to therapeutics is in keeping with our mission
to improve patient care and will provide the company with new opportunities
for revenues from non-competing markets.”
“Mirina is the ninth company in which we have invested at Accelerator,”
said Accelerator CEO Carl Weissman, “and it is the first based upon spinning
technology out of an established publicly-traded biotechnology company. We are
very excited to be entering the interesting area of nucleic acid-based therapeutics
and believe that the Nanogen MGB technology should confer a significant advantage
and differentiation to this effort.”
“We continue to be impressed by Accelerator’s ability to identify,
evaluate and license novel and exciting proprietary technologies,” said
Steve Gillis, Managing Director of ARCH Venture Partners. “The field of
miRNA holds great promise for treating a wide variety of diseases and we are
confident that the proven MGB core technology will provide Mirina with significant
advantages in this highly competitive and potentially lucrative area of therapeutic
product development.