Lake Forest, CA - Rubicon Biotechnology, LLC is pleased to announce that it was awarded a SBIR Phase I grant by the National Eye Institute titled “Targeted Hsp72 as a Therapeutic for Central Retinal Artery Occlusion”. Rubicon is collaborating with Drs. Michael Gorin and Anna Matynia and their teams at the Stein Eye Institute at UCLA to perform the studies under this grant.
It is estimated that 1 in 100,000 people will experience a Central Retinal Artery Occlusion, or CRAO, accompanied by acute monocular vision loss. A CRAO is the ocular analogue of a cerebral stroke. If resolved by reperfusion, 80% of patients have a visual acuity of 20/400 or worse, with studies showing only 21-35% of affected eyes retaining useful vision. Even when treated early, patients may show irreversible damage to the retina and optic nerve atrophy. The body’s natural response to ocular trauma is Hsp72 induction to combat the acute effects of protein denaturation and aggregation and the chronic effects of apoptosis and secondary necrosis. Natural Hsp72 induction can take several hours while a patient is in jeopardy of permanent vision loss.
Rubicon’s solution is to rapidly deliver Hsp72 into retinal cells to combat the effects of CRAO using our platform technology Fv-Hsp72. Fv-Hsp72 has already demonstrated efficacy in cerebral and cardiovascular infarction models.
Under the resources provided by this grant, Rubicon will produce and characterize the Fv-Hsp72 to meet our pre-determined quality specifications. With the material in hand, the team at the Stein Eye Institute will study the effects of administering Fv-Hsp72 at the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) in their CRAO model. The last part of the study will evaluate the Fv-Hsp72 efficacy at the MTD at several time points after reperfusion to determine a maximal window of administration (WoA) that measurably improves retinal cell survival that can be implemented in human clinical settings.
“Rubicon is honored to be working with the Stein Eye Institute, a top research center for ocular diseases. Proof of concept results from these studies will provide the basis for continuing development of the Fv-Hsp72 platform in a wide variety of indications”, commented Richard A. Richieri, Rubicon’s Founding Partner and COO.
About Rubicon Biotechnology
Rubicon Biotechnology is a privately held biotechnology company that develops targeted, life-saving technologies in the areas of defense countermeasures, cardiology, neurology and oncology. Rubicon has in-licensed two platform technologies for drug development. The first is “Antibody Mediated Transduction of Heat Shock Proteins into Living Cells” from the Dept. of Veterans Affairs. This technology delivers heat shock protein, a key protein which saves injured cells that suffer hypoxic and oxidative stresses that unfortunately occur following common tissue injuries, such as heart attack, stroke and traumatic brain injury. The second technology, “Modified Non-Internalizing A5 Variants," licensed from MosaMedix B.V., delivers immunostimulants to tumors in order to enhance the immune system’s ability to fight cancer. With support from several SBIR and CounterACT grants, and in collaboration with major institutions in the U.S., Rubicon is developing these targeted therapies with the goal of improving health outcomes and saving lives.