University of New Mexico's Cancer Center and Center for Molecular Discovery Are Paving the Way for Finding New Uses for Approved Drugs

Albuquerque, NM - May 14, 2012 Researchers at the University of New Mexico are in the forefront of a unique process for finding new uses for approved drugs. The process is called "repurposing" and involves testing drugs, already approved and in use for treating diseases, for efficacy in treating other diseases. University research centers such as UNM's Center for Molecular Discovery are particularly suited for this type of innovation. At the Center for Molecular Discovery, one of only nine national NIH-funded molecular-screening centers in the U.S. and headed by Dr. Larry Sklar from UNM's Department of Pathology, over 40 researchers use a unique high-throughput flow cytometry technology developed by Dr. Sklar and his colleague Dr. Bruce Edwards (also from the Department of Pathology) to screen existing and new compounds for new or improved treatments for diseases. To read more about the repurposing research going on at UNM, see the article by Winthrop Quigley reprinted below from the May 14, 2012 edition of the Albuquerque Journal's Business Outlook. To read the paper, "Drug Repurposing from an Academic Perspective," from Drug Discovery Today: Therapeutic Strategies, go to http://csmres.co.uk/cs.public.upd/article-downloads/Oprea.pdf.

'Repurposing' Pharmaceuticals
By Winthrop Quigley / Journal Staff Writer on Mon, May 14, 2012

Pharmaceutical companies are worried.

News reports from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America annual meeting last month said investors are concerned the billions the companies spend on research aren't producing enough new drugs at precisely the time several highly profitable brand-name medications are about to lose patent protection. Per-capita use of medications declined in 2011.

Big drug makers rely on small, innovative start-up companies to do the research that fills their pipelines with new products, but the recession has stifled venture capital investment in those innovators.

Researchers at the University of New Mexico say their efforts to find new uses for drugs that have already been approved to treat diseases, known as "repurposing," could help pharmaceutical companies find new markets for existing products and at the same time improve treatment of cancer.

UNM's Cancer Center, its Center for Molecular Discovery, and its Clinical and Translational Science Center over the past seven years have investigated new uses for a dozen different drugs.

In a paper published in Drug Discovery Today, 29 scientists, all but one with UNM, say that in the past decade there has been an "unprecedented transition of drug discovery projects from major pharmaceutical houses to academic, nonprofit and small business research units, with particular focus on orphan and neglected diseases." That transition is partly the result of changing business conditions, according to the paper.

Big companies just aren't as innovative as other researchers. Big-company mergers have "resulted in a mass migration of skilled pharmaceutical labor toward other research units," while federal initiatives have encouraged academic research and joint projects between academic and company researchers. Academics also have better access to tools than they once did, thanks to "the increasing amount of public and open-source data, knowledge and software that can be utilized for drug discovery projects."

A Cancer Center team led by Robert Hromas years ago discovered that a reason cancer cells can be hard to kill is that they produce more than the usual amount of a protein called metnase that helps cells repair damaged DNA. The team began computer searches for compounds that might inhibit metnase production and found a promising drug in raltegravir. That drug was approved to help slow the spread of HIV. It works by inhibiting HIV integrase, a protein that is similar in structure to metnase.

The UNM Cancer Center is testing the repurposed raltegravir in combination with a chemotherapy drug used to treat head and neck cancers.

UNM is testing an anti-inflammatory drug that is approved for use as a pain reliever to be repurposed for therapy following ovarian cancer surgery. Anti-psychotic drugs are being evaluated for their use in treating some blood cancers.

UNM's scientific success may or may not lead to commercial success, said Larry Sklar, director of UNM's Center for Molecular Discovery and the Cancer Center's associate director for basic research.

The university could get revenue from drug companies to perform clinical trials, and certainly patients benefit, Sklar said, but to create a business, perhaps by spinning off a new company based on UNM research, "is more complicated. It has to do with a drug that's already approved, already on the market and already being sold." It isn't clear how a company or a university makes money on someone else's product merely by finding a new market into which it can be sold.

Tudor Oprea, chief of UNM's Division of Biocomputing, said he tried to get Merck, which produces raltegravir, to participate in UNM's repurposing work. He said the company wasn't interested.

"The business models for repurposing are still be developed," Sklar said. "We're hopeful that there will be a business model. (UNM researchers are working on) more than a dozen projects. The hope is some of these will lead to a commercialization strategy."

Since Merck's patents don't mention the use of raltegravir against cancer, UNM has filed some patents of its own. "We have biological indications that do give us certain property rights," Oprea said.

Sklar said that repurposed drugs might require different packaging, formulation or delivery systems, which could lead to a marketable product and a commercial venture. Before any of that can happen, UNM must first demonstrate efficacy—the ability of the drugs to produce a medically beneficial effect. That is a few years away.

Source: Albuquerque Journal's Business Outlook

For more information, contact:

Winthrop Quigley
(505) 823-3896
wquigley@abqjournal.com

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