PASADENA, CA--(Marketwire - April 21, 2009) -
Materia, Inc. announced today the receipt of
Phase II Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) funding from the
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS; a component of the
NIH) for the further development of a family of advanced reagents for drug
discovery.
The program, a collaborative effort between Materia and Professor Paul R.
Hanson of the University of Kansas, uses Materia's proprietary Ring Opening
Metathesis Polymerization (ROMP) catalysts to generate high-load polymeric
reagents/scavengers with tunable properties for application in
high-throughput chemistry and parallel synthesis. Pharmaceutical
researchers heavily use immobilized reagents to facilitate lead generation
and lead optimization. The tunable properties of the new reagents enable
significantly improved efficiencies regarding lower mass loadings, higher
reaction kinetics, and more desirable solubility profiles while retaining
the desirable handling and separation characteristics of traditional
solid-phase reagents.
"The Phase I results in conjunction with development work within the
University of Kansas Chemical Methodologies and Library Development Center
(KU-CMLD) quite convincingly demonstrated the efficiency and versatility of
the ROMP technology for the synthesis of these highly functional systems,"
stated Dr. Mark S. Trimmer, Materia's Vice President of R&D. "It is
exciting that the NIH recognizes the importance of this work and promotes
programs such as the STTR to foster the teaming of small high-tech
companies with prestigious academic institutions such as KU to develop
commercial solutions to important technical problems." Professor Paul R.
Hanson of the University of Kansas adds, "This grant will enable production
of these reagent tools and distribution to the wider academic and
pharmaceutical community. In collaboration with the KU-CMLD Center, we hope
to advance these reagents further into new and exciting areas of synthesis
and drug discovery."
About Materia
Materia was founded in 1998 to commercialize olefin metathesis catalyst
technology. This market-enabling, Nobel Prize-winning, green chemical
technology enables chemical compounds to be synthesized with greater
efficiency, under less stringent reaction conditions, and with reduced
byproducts and hazardous waste. Metathesis has been accepted as an emerging
"green technology" platform and has been broadly adopted by the
pharmaceutical, chemical, and polymer industries. As stated by the Royal
Swedish Academy of Sciences when awarding the 2005 Nobel Prize, "metathesis
is an example of how important basic science has been applied for the
benefit of man, society, and the environment." For more information, visit
www.materia-inc.com.
About the University of Kansas Chemical Methodologies and Library
Development Center (KU-CMLD)
The NIH Center in Chemical Methodologies and Library Development (CMLD,
Jeffrey Aubé, PI, Medicinal Chemistry) is a multidisciplinary initiative
established in 2003 to enable the development of new chemical methodologies
to enhance projects directed at library synthesis. Current focus includes
the broad areas of microwave-assisted flow synthesis, methods for complex
scaffold synthesis, organometallic parallel synthesis and the preparation
of libraries based on natural products.
The project described was supported by Award Number R42GM076765 from the
National Institute of General Medical Sciences. The content is solely the
responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the
official views of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences or the
National Institutes of Health.
