Came across this company while noodling around with TLRs. The website isn't functional yet, but might be worth looking out for. O'Neill seems to have published quite a lot...
Opsona to lead biotech wave
Sunday, August 15, 2004
By Adrian Weckler
A biotechnology start-up based at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) hopes to lead a new wave of Irish life science venture when it launches this autumn.The company, Opsona, is working on drug discovery using protein research. It is understood to have almost completed its first round of venture capital funding from a mixture of Irish and foreign investors.
Mark Heffernan, Opsona's chief executive, declined to give details, but said that he was optimistic that the company would enter a funding partnership by October. The amount is understood to be in seven figures.
The company's chairman is Cormac Kilty, who is also chairman and chief executive of established biotechnology company Biotrin. ``Opsona has, in my view, Ireland's top three immunologists,'' said Kilty, who is also an investor in Opsona.
``They've developed novel strategies for treating inflammation, which is one of the biggest effects in the world.
They're also into creating vaccines. The areas of application include multiple sclerosis and arthritis.''
Opsona was set up in February when several TCD academics realised that they held between them potentially valuable patents for new treatments against arthritis and other debilitating conditions.
Apart from Kilty, Opsona's directors are Luke O'Neill, professor in the department of biochemistry at TCD, Kingston Mills, professor of immunology at TCD, and Dermot Kelleher, professor of medicine at TCD.
``Right now we're in the process of looking for major funding to commercialise patents we have to make new drugs,'' O'Neill said. The amount involved could be millions of euro, due to the lengthy timeline involved in biotechnology research....
SFI-Funded Research Team Makes Significant Medical Breakthrough
A team of researchers funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) has made a significant breakthrough that could lead to new treatments for infectious and inflammatory diseases.
The team of immunologists, led by Professor Luke O’Neill in the Department of Biochemistry, Trinity College Dublin, has discovered a new process in our bodies that dampens down the potentially dangerous effects of an over-active immune response to bacterial infections.
The findings provide important new information on how our immune systems are regulated during infection and will help efforts to develop new treatments for diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.
“The project dates back to 1999 when I was working on sabbatical at Millennium Pharmaceuticals in the USA,” said Professor O’ Neill. “Millennium had discovered a protein called ST2 (cf 6,323,334), which when activated would dampen down the inflammation that occurs in lungs during an asthma attack. What they didn’t know however, was how ST2 worked,” he explained.
In the following four years a new family of switches for the immune response were discovered, called the Toll-like receptors (TLRs). These proteins respond to infection and trigger inflammation, which is required to eliminate invading microbes.
When over-activated, TLRs can become killers. People who die of bacterial infections - which total over 300,000 a year in Europe alone - die because of an over-activation of TLRs, in a manner akin to “friendly fire”.
The TCD team has discovered that ST2 can turn off TLRs, effectively acting as a brake on the signalling machine activated by them. “ST2 is not present at the start of the response, but is made later, acting as a brake on the inflammation that has been triggered,” said Prof O’Neill. These findings have been protected in the form of patents. This will ensure proper commercialisation in the development of innovative products for diagnosis and treatment of inflammatory dysfunction.
Prof O’Neill is currently part of a collaborative effort with two other Trinity researchers to commercialise their research with a new Irish biotechnology venture, Opsona.
Dr Maurice N. Treacy, director of biotechnology at SFI, commented: “The ongoing programme aims to reveal further information on ST2 and TLRs and will enable the team make new discoveries that could have great commercial potential”... |
