Materia Announces National Institutes of Health (NIH) Award for Further Development of Drug Discovery Reagents

PASADENA, CA--(Marketwire - June 07, 2011) -

Materia announced today the funding of a Phase I Fast Track Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the development of reagent and scavengers for use in high throughput chemistry. The proposed reagents will offer numerous benefits to the drug discovery industry.

The Phase I award is part of a Fast Track STTR application that is designed to develop and scale-up Si-ROMP hybrid reagents and scavengers and optimize the process for their commercialization. The Fast Track option is intended to reduce the funding time between Phase I and Phase II of the project. Approval of Phase II by the NIH will result in a total award of $1.2M.

The funded program will be a continued collaboration between Materia and Professor Paul R. Hanson of the University of Kansas that builds upon the success of an earlier STTR Phase II grant. Materia’s Grubbs Catalyst Technology™ will be used in the application of surface-initiated ring opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) which will assist in the generation of high load supported reagents with tunable properties. The reagents will be particularly useful in batch and flow-through technologies used in drug discovery by providing broad solvent compatibility, ease of handling, thermal stability and utilization in large-scale purification.

“Materia is pleased to continue our relationship with Professor Hanson and the University of Kansas in the development of these exciting reagents,” stated Dr. Michael Giardello, Materia’s Chief Executive Officer. “We are looking forward to the opportunity to help transition another technology using our catalysts systems from the laboratory to the commercial marketplace.”

“We are honored and excited to continue our collaborative partnership with Materia, Inc.,” added Professor Hanson. “Their expertise in catalysis, polymerization and scale up are synergistic with goals of this project and should enable further development of this new and challenging science.”

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.

This 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.