BellBrook Labs gets major research funding

Madison, Wis. -- The National Institute for General Medical Sciences has awarded BellBrook Labs a $1 million SBIR Phase II grant, while the National Cancer Institute has awarded the company a $180,000 SBIR Phase I grant, the Madison-based company reported Thursday.

The General Medical Sciences grant will be for the continued development, optimization and validation of a fluorescent HTS assay for human sulfotransferases.

Sulfotransferase enzymes play an important role in the metabolism of drugs, the company noted. The concerns of drug metabolism, such as drug/drug interactions and the production of toxic metabolites, are the focus of pharmaceutical efforts and play a key role in the extremely high failure rate of clinical trials, according to the company, which said the most promising approach for effectively managing the success of clinical trials is the implementation of strategies that predict drug metabolism. A high throughput screening assay for characterizing sulfotransferases is one such approach. BellBrook Lab's Transcreener Sulfotransferase Assay will enable a systematic approach toward characterizing and profiling drug metabolism before clinical trials.

The National Cancer Institute award will allow the company to pursue the development of Transcreener Kinase Assay, a generic fluorescent HTS assay for protein kinases.

Kinase malfunction has been linked to all of the most prominent therapeutic areas, including cancer, cardiovascular diseases, inflammation, neurodegenerative diseases and metabolic disorders. BellBrook Labs is developing a universal kinase assay based on its Transcreener HTS Assay platform. The Transcreener Kinase Assay will enable pharmaceutical companies to accelerate development of new drugs with fewer side effects for cancer and other diseases by providing an assay that can be used with any kinase and any acceptor substrate, according to the company.

BellBrook Labs develops high throughput screening tools that accelerate the discovery of more effective therapies.