BioWorld International Correspondent

LONDON - Scotland's publicly funded technology commercialization body, ITI Life Sciences, wants to invest in a drug discovery program in ubiquitin signaling and has launched a worldwide search for companies and academics to take part.

ITI singled out the ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) after carrying out a market scoping exercise in emerging drug targets. That showed that while UPS provides a rich source of emerging drug targets, it remains relatively unexploited and largely uncharted in terms of drug discovery.

The proteasome inhibitor Velcade, which is approved for treating multiple myeloma, provides validation of UPS as a target. But UPS is implicated also in other cancers and in neurodegenerative, inflammatory, metabolic and infectious diseases.

ITI considers UPS ripe for exploitation in those indications and wants to fund a drug discovery program. Responses are being invited from companies, agencies, institutes, academia and individuals. No geographical restrictions apply, and responses from non-UK organizations are welcome.

Eleanor Mitchell, acting CEO of ITI Life Sciences said, "We believe ubiquitin signaling is a very exciting area for drug discovery R&D, but at present it has not yet reached a level to attract substantial venture capital funding."

However, she said, it is at the right stage of development for ITI Life Sciences to fund in its role of bridging the gap between academic and commercial R&D. In return for funding R&D programs and coordinating the work of individual contributors, ITI Life Sciences requires that it own all intellectual property. Participants have exclusive right of first refusal to license IP they have generated at fair market value.

To date, ITI Life Sciences has invested more than £50 million (US$99.1 million) of a total budget of £150 million in five research programs. Most recently it announced a £9.5 million project to develop scaleable GMP-standard manufacturing processes for stem cells. The lion's share of that funding went to an overseas company Cellartis AB, of Gothenburg, Sweden, offending Scotland's home-grown specialist Stem Cell Sciences Group plc, of Edinburgh.