MitoSciences Inc. Licenses Phospho-Proteins From the Hospital for Sick Children
Posted on: Monday, 14 July 2008, 21:00 CDT
MitoSciences today announces an agreement with the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto, Canada, whereby SickKids will provide MitoSciences with recombinant vector systems for producing the four kinases and two phosphatases that activate and deactivate the enzyme PDH (pyruvate dehydrogenase).
MitoSciences has patent pending tests for measuring PDH activity in both high-throughput and clinical platforms, and intends to use the newly accessed proteins to provide complete solutions for understanding the activity of PDH.
PDH has been identified as a key biomarker for cancer, diabetes and certain inherited diseases, and it is deactivated by kinases and re-activated by phosphatases.
"MitoSciences has been at the leading edge in designing novel tools for measuring PDH," said president Jean-Paul Audette, "and with the combination of our existing technology and the new proteins from SickKids we can now provide the most complete solution available anywhere for understanding PDH and its activity in human and rodent cells."
For more than 80 years it has been known that cancer cells generate their energy principally by glycolytic metabolism rather than by oxidative metabolism, the latter being the primary energy source in healthy cells. It has only recently been discovered that this switch, known as the Warburg effect, is caused at least in part by diminished PDH activity, and that this diminished activity is the result of phosphorylation by kinases.
PDH, or more accurately the kinases that deactivate PDH, have also recently been proposed as an important target for diabetes therapies. Activation of PDH has the potential to benefit diabetic patients by inhibiting gluceogenesis and by promoting glucose disposal.
Drugs that selectively inhibit the three PDH kinases are thus highly sought-after targets for pharmaceutical companies, and these drugs have the potential to provide therapies that could help millions of cancer and diabetes sufferers.
The new products that will soon be released by MitoSciences will allow drug developers to quickly and accurately screen potential PDH kinase inhibitors.
About MitoSciences Inc.
MitoSciences is a developer and manufacturer of monoclonal antibodies and immunoassays for use in understanding mitochondrial function and metabolism. MitoSciences' products are used by pharmaceutical companies, clinical laboratories, and basic researchers to unlock the role of metabolic enzymes in disease, drug therapy, and drug toxicology. MitoSciences' products support the rapidly growing fields of systems biology and personalized medicine.
Links
http://www.mitosciences.com
Source: Business Wire
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