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Biotech Start-Up Finds STD Treatment in Anti-Cancer Therapy

Electron micrograph of Neisseria gonorrhoeae

Electron micrograph of Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NIH.gov)

Researchers with the biotechnology company TherapyX Inc. in Buffalo, New York found a potential treatment for the sexually transmitted disease (STD) gonorrhea in a therapy the company is developing for cancer. The team from TherapyX, a spin-off company of the University at Buffalo medical school, published its findings today online in the Journal of Infectious Diseases (paid subscription required).

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some 700,000 new infections from the bacteria Neisseria gonorrhoeae occur each year, making it the second most commonly reported bacterial STD.  The CDC reported last year increasing resistance of  N. gonorrhoeae to a broad range of antimicrobial treatments.

Michael Russell, an immunologist at Buffalo and the paper’s senior author, says the research focused on a property of gonococcal infection that seems to inhibit specific adaptive immune responses. “It turns out that gonococcal infection very cleverly controls the immune system,” says Russell in a university statement, “inducing responses the bacterium can fight and suppressing the responses that it cannot fight.” Russell is also a scientific advisor toTherapyX.

Immunology colleague Nejat Egilmez, a co-author of the paper and a founder of TherapyX, developed a drug-delivery technology called NanoCap that harnesses nanoscale particles of the protein Interleukin-12 in a sustained-release formulation to stimulate an immune response against cancerous tumors that normally suppress that response. With Yingru Liu, a Buffalo immunology colleague and first author of the paper, Russell and Egilmez tested the NanoCap technology against gonococcal infections in female mice.

The paper describes the intravaginal administration of Interleukin-12 in microencapsulated form similar to NanoCap in mice with gonococcal infections. The mice, say the researchers, developed antobodies specific to N. gonorrhoeae and were able to clear the infections in a matter of days. After a month, the immunized mice were also able to fight off further gonococcal infections, indicating Interleukin-12 continued to work.

TherapyX, which Egilmez and colleagues started originally to commercialize NanoCap as a cancer therapy, expanded the the company’s focus to include genital tract infections. In February, the company received a Small Business Innovation Research grant from National Institutes of Health for further preclinical development of the technology to treat and prevent genital tract infections. Liu is the principal investigator for TherapyX on the $300,000 project. The university’s technology transfer office filed for a patent on the technology.

Russell believes this immunotherapy approach could have benefits against other infections where bacterial resistance is a problem. “If we can use this method to teach the immune system to generate the right kind of response to other recalcitrant infections,” says Russell, “then we could have a new approach to treat a range of infectious diseases without stimulating drug resistance.”

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