Materia Announces Phase II STTR Funding From National Institutes of Health (NIH) for Development of Advanced Reagent Systems for Drug Discovery

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.

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Technorati: immobilized reagents drug discovery high throughput chemistry parallel synthesis