SBIR Grant Awarded for Drug-to-Drug Interactions Research

Optivia Biotechnology Inc. in Menlo Park, California received a $1.85 million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from National Institutes of Health to determine the mechanisms that underlie certain drug-to-drug interactions, to help improve medication safety. The award was made by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at NIH.

The phase 2 SBIR grant — phase 2 awards build technologies specified in earlier proof-of-concept tests — will fund development of a set of assays and a database to identify the most clinically significant drug-drug interactions (DDIs) that involve membrane transporters. These are proteins that transport a drug across the cell membrane and either enable or block its effectiveness.

Transporters are a class of 300 to 400 membrane proteins that facilitate the movement of drugs and other substances into and out of cells, and thus play a vital role in drug response and safety. A March 2010 report from the International Transporter Consortium identified some significant transporter-related DDIs.

The grant includes $367,000 to fund research at the University of California, San Francisco to profile 2,000 prescription drugs against key transporters in the liver and kidney. This study is expected to be the largest and most comprehensive to date on the interaction between prescription drugs and membrane transporters.

Yong Huang, CEO of Optivia, says the research will provide the company and its collaborators with a framework to build the most a comprehensive transporter-biology platform, including standardized in vitro assays, in silico models, and a knowledge base to better understand, predict, and alleviate transporter-related adverse drug reactions.

Read more: Pfizer and UCSF Sign R&D Collaboration, More Planned

Photo: Horia Varlan/Flickr

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