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(S*Bio) Developing New Drugs Against Cancer
Date: 27-May-2004
In June 2000, the Economic Development Board Investments (EDBI) and Chiron Corporation, a US pharmaceutical company, jointly established S*BIO Pte Ltd, Singapore's first fully integrated, small molecule-based, drug discovery venture. Its R&D facility, which began operations in January 2002, occupies 22,000 sqft in Science Park II and comprises Biology and Chemistry laboratories. Since then, the company has made significant headway towards achieving its vision of becoming an internationally competitive biotech company to discover and develop products using proprietary cutting-edge technologies. The company has built up a strong international scientific team, with 50 staff from 12 countries. S*BIO's R&D team has developed expertise in the entire drug discovery process, ranging from target validation to pre-clinical trials.
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Through a technology license agreement, S*BIO gained access to Chiron Corporation's validated targets, gene expression database, compound collection, as well as tools utilized in combinatorial chemistry and computational chemistry. This allowed S*BIO to jumpstart its R&D operations and rapidly establish a fully integrated drug discovery and development platform. Research efforts are now focused on cancer, in accordance with S*BIO's objective of identifying and developing novel small molecule anti-cancer drug candidates.
"S*BIO's research efforts are focused on cancer, as this disease is an important therapeutic field with unmet medical needs. In year 2000, there were more than 9,000,000 incidences. Worldwide, the market is expected to grow to US$32 billion by 2006, at a compound annual growth rate of 11%," said Dr. Michael Entzeroth, Chief Scientific Officer, S*BIO Pte Ltd.
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Dr. Michael Entzeroth, Chief Scientific Officer, S*BIO Pte Ltd
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S*BIO's R&D efforts encompass the entire drug discovery process, including target validation, assay development, combinatorial chemistry, high throughput screening and medicinal chemistry. S*BIO has developed proprietary platforms for liquid phase and solid phase high throughput chemical synthesis to support the rapid design of combinatorial libraries. The company is currently working on six projects in oncology, which are at different stages of pre-clinical development. S*BIO hopes to deliver its first clinical candidate by end of 2005.
"The company's long-term objective is to develop the capability to present at least one pre-development candidate per year for out-licensing to complete clinical development. We believe that this is possible as we have a strong scientific team and established capabilities in drug discovery," said Dr. Entzeroth.
When asked about partnerships, Dr. Entzeroth elaborated that, "S*BIO is able to tap on some of Asia's and Singapore's excellent capabilities in the area of cancer, through organizations such as the Genome Institute of Singapore, National Cancer Centre, NUS Oncology Research Institute and Johns Hopkins Singapore."
In February 2004, S*BIO and the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) agreed to collaborate on the validation of novel therapeutic targets related to their fundamental expertise in cancer research. Both parties will perform pharmacological validation of targets derived from GIS' gene expression database and basic research. On an international front, S*BIO also has an agreement with Shanghai Comman Pharmaceutical Inc. This allows S*BIO to gain access to additional chemistry expertise for the synthesis of novel chemical building blocks and starting materials.
Going forward, S*BIO will continue to establish collaborations with other leading industry players and research institutes, as it aims to develop better therapeutics to improve disease prognosis and the quality of life. Through international partnerships, S*BIO will boost its efforts in contributing to the global scientific community. As Singapore's first fully-integrated drug discovery company, this home-grown venture is set to play a key role in enabling Singapore to achieve its goal of becoming a Biomedical Sciences R&D hub.
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