Drug development company Proteologics Inc. announced on Friday that it achieved a further milestone in its collaboration with Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Nasdaq: TEVA; TASE: TEVA). Teva is now required, under the terms of its contract with Proteologics, to provide the company with additional funding for further research.
Proteologics has discovered a target for its drug, meaning a substance inside the body which the drug can change, thereby enabling it to impact on the mechanism of the disease. The target discovered by the company belongs to the ubiquitin-based ligase class. This group includes several thousand molecules that transfer the ubiquitin protein to cells, affecting their functioning and activity.
The ligase that Proteologics has discovered relates to the resistance by cancerous cells to a common chemotherapy drug. The company believes that if it can intervene in the activity of the ligase, it will be able to reduce or eliminate the resistance to the chemotherapy drug. However, it has not yet found a molecule that will impact on the mechanism (and which will eventually be developed as a drug itself), so this represents a development that is still in the initial stages.
Proteologics was founded in 1999. Its investors include Lewis Pell and Shlomo Ben Haim, ABS Ventures (Deutsche Bank - Alex Brown), Giza Venture Capital, Challenge Fund - Etgar, Reslo Life Sciences, and Teva. Despite being at a fairly early stage, the company has already raised $29 million. It has also received several million dollars in finance from Teva for the development of its first molecule.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on November 27, 2006
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