BioWorld International Correspondent

LONDON - Protein-folding specialist Zyentia Ltd. secured first-round funding of £1.5 million (US$2.8 million) and formed its first research collaboration to discover compounds that prevent the early stages of protein aggregation in Parkinson's disease.

Ian Rubin, Zyentia's CEO, told BioWorld International the funding will take the company through to 2006 and "enable us to move two, or possibly three programs through early preclinical development, at which point we are going to partner."

Zyentia's focus is on diseases characterized by amyloid deposits, including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease and Type II diabetes.

"In all these diseases the amyloid deposits themselves are not very important, in the sense that they are blobs of protein that are not doing very much," Rubin said. "But as they start to form, the early aggregates are cytotoxic, and it is this that kills off cells - in the substantia nigra in the case of Parkinson's disease, for example."

The aim of the collaboration, with the Institute of Biomedical Research of Barcelona, Parc Cientific de Barcelona, Spain, will be identifying peptidomimetics and small-molecule compounds that interfere with aggregation of the protein alpha-synuclein.

Rubin said there is increasing evidence supporting the active involvement of misfolding of alpha-synuclein in the promotion of cytotoxicity, and subsequent neurodegeneration, in Parkinson's disease.

Zyentia will be working with Ernest Giralt, an expert in peptide chemistry and its application to stabilizing molecules for drug delivery. The aim is to produce orally available compounds that can penetrate the blood-brain barrier. Rubin said the early aggregates that the collaboration targets are not structured like proteins, making it harder to get specificity.

Zyentia's skill in protein folding enables it to take any protein sequence and predict which areas are most important in causing it to aggregate. The company has assays for measuring protein folding in vitro, and also cell-based assays that can be used to assess a compound's ability to inhibit cytotoxicity and to control aggregation.

Rubin said the company is close to agreeing to a second research collaboration with a team of Dutch researchers in Type II diabetes. Discussions on a third deal in Alzheimer's disease are at an early stage.

Cambridge, UK-based Zyentia was spun out of Oxford University by the technology management company IP2IPO in 2002, as part of a deal with the university's chemistry department to finance commercialization of its research. Rubin also is CEO of Glycoform Ltd., another IP2IPO/Oxford University start-up.