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June 17, 2012
By Martin Swant --- The Birmingham News
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- A Birmingham-based biotechnology company has won a $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health as the company develops a machine to help pharmaceutical companies in part of the drug development process.
Soluble Therapeutics Inc., based at Innovation Depot, won the NIH grant as part of the Small Business Technology Transfer Program. The money will go toward accelerating Soluble Therapeutics' commercialization of a technology that pharmaceutical companies can use in identifying formulations for protein-based drugs, often injectable drugs such as for cancers and auto-immune disorders. Last summer, Soluble Therapeutics received a $1 million round of venture funding for the project. This will be the third generation of the technology, but the first to be sold commercially.
"In a lot of cases, diseases are caused by the body not producing the right amount of a protein or the right type of a protein," John McCarter, director of business development for Soluble Therapeutics said.
Soluble Therapeutics was founded in 2008, specifically for the commercialization of the HSC Technology, which was spun off of research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The HSC Technology is used in the stage between in vitro developments of the drug and before it's used in animal models.
The current chief executive, Joseph Garner, was formerly a Maryland-based biotech entrepreneur before he joined the company in 2010 to spearhead the commercialization. The technology helps determine whether a certain protein interacts with the formulation that keeps the protein drug active and effective in the body.
Soluble Therapeutics' product also reduces the amount of a protein required for drug development, which makes the already lengthy drug development process faster and cheaper, McCarter said. The formulation - a liquid solution such used in injectable pharmaceuticals - prevents the protein from interacting with itself. If the protein clumps up in the solution rather than interacting with cells it's supposed to treat, it becomes ineffective and potentially harmful for a patient.
"That's the bottleneck right there: coming up with the recipe that keeps the protein happy," McCarter said.
The bulk of the revenue will come from sales of the HSC Technology when it hits the market, McCarter said. The majority of revenue comes from work it does as a contract research organization and McCarter said the company plans to continue CRO work even after it begins technology sales.
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