Parabon NanoLabs,
a leading designer and manufacturer of breakthrough products at the nanoscale,
announced today its award of a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business
Innovative Research (SBIR) grant. The grant will be used to demonstrate the
viability of a new class of anticancer molecules that are engineered to automatically
self-assemble from interlocking strands of synthetic DNA. It was a combination
of innovations - DNA nanotechnology fabrication and grid computing sequence
optimization - that led to Parabon NanoLabs' award.
Unlike other therapeutics, Parabon's compounds are deliberately engineered
to solve specific therapeutic goals using an approach that effectively
replaces the current paradigm of "drug discovery" with that of "drug
design." By affixing molecular subcomponents (e.g., antibodies, pharmaceuticals
and enzymes) to strands of DNA that are pre-sequenced to attach to one another
to form composite constructs, Parabon NanoLabs researchers produce therapeutics
that are able to precisely target and destroy individual cancer cells, without
damaging surrounding healthy tissue. The highly competitive SBIR award from
NSF will fund pre-clinical experiments, designed in collaboration with researchers
at a leading pharmaceutical company, to validate the approach and demonstrate
the efficacy of these novel compounds.
Key to Parabon's approach is the use of synthetic DNA as a programmable
molecular substrate. Although DNA is best known as a carrier of genetic information,
individual strands of synthetic DNA can be constructed to have any sequence
of bases (commonly represented by the letters A, C, G and T). Because certain
sequences of DNA are mutually attractive, these synthetic strands can be "programmed"
with sequences that cause them to "swim to the right spot," with
respect to one another, and then bind to form nanostructures of virtually any
shape. By attaching DNA strands to other types of molecular subcomponents (e.g.,
antibodies to recognize tumor cells and pharmaceuticals comprising a kill payload),
nanostructures can be richly functionalized to form novel therapeutics that
are able to seek out and destroy specific tumor cells without affecting surrounding
tissue.
Parabon NanoLabs has advanced both the fabrication technology required to produce
such therapeutics and the computational tools to design them. In particular,
the Company has developed a CAD (computer-aided design) application, called
inSequio, which facilitates the design and sequencing of therapeutic
nanostructures by harnessing the computational power of thousands of computers
on the Parabon Frontier Grid Platform. In development for three years,
inSequio utilizes grid computing to solve what had been the major impediment
to progress in the field of DNA nanotechnology: the intractable task of calculating
the sequences of DNA required for self-assembly and functionalization of target
nanostructures.
"NSF runs its SBIR program like a seasoned venture capital firm and the
competition for these awards is fierce," stated Dr. Steven Armentrout,
Parabon NanoLabs President and CEO. "Parabon NanoLabs is proud to have
been granted this opportunity and with it, we are determined to demonstrate
the efficacy of our therapeutics."