Elasmogen, a biotech spin-out of Aberdeen University, secures US patent for its immunisation technology derived from sharks.
Elasmogen, a life sciences firm developing variable new antigen receptor (VNAR) protein drugs derived from sharks, has bolstered its global intellectual property standing by acquiring a US patent.
VNAR technology developed at Aberdeen University, which Elasmogen is commercialising, is already patented in several other parts of the world, and has been used to generate compounds against inflammatory disease and cancer.
VNARs in sharks play a similar role to antibodies in humans, but are the smallest in the natural world, at roughly a twelfth the size of our counterparts. This smaller size means they can penetrate areas human antibodies can’t, such as deep inside cancer tumours. Further, the VNARs can also be modified to carry cancer-killing payloads.
Elasmogen is yet to formally spin-out from Aberdeen, and will launch later this year. Its work and patent filing is currently funded by Scottish Enterprise and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council with a £1.5m award.
Caroline Barelle, who will be the CEO and chief science officer of Elasmogen when it spins-out of the university, said: “We are delighted that both our science and intellectual property has progressed so well. This joining by conjugation chemistry of toxic drug “war-heads” to relatively delicate proteins can sometimes be a tricky process. One might predict that proteins that come from sharks would be tough and in this case at least they really are. This means that we can use ‘harsh conjugation chemistry’ to get efficient loading of drugs onto our VNAR domain to generate a molecule that can both enhance the efficacy of other drugs by increasing their time in the body, whilst also being a potent cancer killer in its own right.”
