Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Biotech / Medical : Ligand (LGND) Breakout! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: celeryroot.com who wrote (21987)	6/10/1998 9:34:00 AM
From: Henry Niman	Respond to of 32384

I might be useful for me to try a more general description of the mimics break though. There are two major categories of hormones. One is non-polypeptide which the pharmas love. The molecules are very small so they can passively get into cells where they activate appropriate hormone receptors which turn appropriate genes on and off. These small molecules can be made and modified cheaply and are taken orally. This area is addressed by LGND's IR technology. They have compounds in the clinic that are in the retinoid/rexinoid class (Viatmin A derivatives) as well as the SERM class (interact with the estrogen receptors. LGND's largest internal program is in the androgen agonist and antagonist area (enhance or block the androgen receptor). The polypeptide hormone arena has been explored largely by Biotechs. These hormones are much bigger, but Biotechnology has made it easier to make large amounts of these homones, such as insulin (Humalin), erythropoetin (Epogen), G-CSF (Neupogen). Big pharms generally don't like these compounds because they are expensive to make and are taken via injection. These hormones initially interact with receptors on the surface of cells and the signal goes through several intermediates, culminating with transcription factors that turn genes on and off, much like the non-polyppetide hormone receptors describe above. LGND's STAT technology (see home.att.net ) targets these transcription factors with small molecules, as they do for the IRs. This is complex at the molecular level because these "activated" transcription factors interact with each other as well as other regulator proteins with the cell. The molecular mimics are another approach to this STAT pathway of transmitting signals. Instead of using small molecules that bind to the transcription factors (at the back end of the pathway), they target the receptor on that cell surface that binds the large polypeptide hormone (front end of the pathway). Most did not think that this approach was feasible (they thought that a small molecule could not compete with a large polypeptide for the binding site). LGND has shown that this is NOT the case and that a small molecule can be as effective as the large polypeptide hormone at initiating the signalling pathway. Thus, a large array of Biotechnology therapeutic products are fair game. Eventually, these large injected proteins will be replaced with small oral mimics. LGND will publish this ground breaking research very soon in Science and it will have a major impact.