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AndroBioSys Receives Funding From The John R. Oishei Foundation
5/14/2010 2:28:12 PM
BUFFALO, NY – May 13, 2010 – AndroBioSys (ABS), Inc., a biotech company focused on developing more effective treatments for prostate disease, announced today it has secured investment funding from the John R. Oishei Foundation, a well-known Western New York philanthropic organization focused on enhancing the medical research, healthcare and education environment of the Buffalo area. “AndroBioSys represents the kind of organization the Oishei Foundation would like to see flourish in the Buffalo area,” said President Robert D. Gioia. “As a local biotech company, it has great potential both to contribute to our economy and to address locally prevalent health issues.” AndroBioSys was created from research conducted at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, and co-founded by Gary Smith, PhD and James Mohler, MD, members of the Prostate Program, who together have conducted more than $35 million in federally-funded prostate cancer research. “We are honored to receive Oishei Foundation funding,” said Mohler, who serves as the company’s chief medical officer. “This support will enable us to better take advantage of opportunities in the drug discovery market.” The company holds several patent pending technologies targeted toward the pharmaceutical industry. Initially, ABS has focused on its AngioGraft? assay that enables pharmaceutical companies to test potential pharmaceuticals in human tissue prior to use in patients. Clinical trials, where candidate drugs are tested in humans, represent the most expensive stage in drug development, and the stage where the majority of drug candidates fail. The AngioGraft assay is a unique pre-clinical technology that uses intact human tissue to identify more targeted therapies that have better efficacy in humans. “This support from the Oishei Foundation , together with funding from local angel investors, Excell Partners and the Erie County IDA allows us to continue to make important research advances in our contract research and prostate cancer therapeutic programs” noted Michael Zwick, CEO of AndroBioSys. “Investment funding together with grant money allows us to be more resourceful with accessing needed capital in these difficult financial times”. AndroBioSys has accomplished steady growth through a combination of early and late stage seed funding and federal grants. The company has been awarded three Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a Small Business Technology Transfer grant from the Department of Defense to study prostate cancer stem cells. The John R. Oishei Foundation strives to be a catalyst for change to enhance economic vitality and the quality of life for the Buffalo Niagara region. John R. Oishei established the Foundation that bears his name in 1940 with the mandate to concentrate support on medical research, healthcare and education in the Buffalo area along with cultural and social needs. In addition to its pre-clinical screening services for drug developers, AndroBioSys has developed three therapeutic programs aimed at overcoming the limitations of today’s prostate cancer treatments: an androgen blockage program that targets an enzyme responsible for prostate growth and hormone dependent prostate cancer; a prostate imaging and vascular targeting program that uses nanoparticles to image and thermal ablation to treat prostate disease; and a program that targets cancer stem cells resistant to chemotherapy. Cancer stem sells are responsible for metastasis, which spreads cancer throughout the body and produces the lethal form of prostate cancer. As with the AngioGraft assay, these models utilize intact human tissue models to identify candidate drugs most likely to be successful in clinical trials.
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