You can do a lot with $1 million.

But Icogen Corp., which was awarded that amount as part of a Small Business Innovation Research grant, is focused on a single use for the funding: the second part of a project identifying inhibitors of chemokine receptors that may be developed to treat inflammatory diseases.

Activation of chemokine receptors, which are found on immune cells, causes cells to migrate to areas of inflammation. Damping the response might be an effective form of treatment in diseases where the response is too robust.

Seattle-based Icogen was awarded the grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, a unit of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. The NIH is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, one of 10 federal agencies required by law to administer SBIR programs. Federal law mandates that any agency with extramural research and development budgets or more than $100 million must set aside 2.5 percent for SBIR programs. The grants are awarded to small companies to conduct innovative research that has the potential for commercialization and public benefit.

Icogen called its selection a validation of ISOPLeC, its screening approach for the identification of protein-effector compounds from either natural products libraries or large diverse peptide libraries. Icogen said its key initial targets are chemokine receptors, a subset of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). Products that inhibit chemokine receptors could become the basis for new treatments for inflammatory diseases.

"The committee evaluated innovation, whether the project is feasible and important in terms of current science and medicine, commercial opportunity and an estimation of the training and background of people that are on the ground as well," Icogen founder and CEO Frederick Hagen told BioWorld Today. "This grant was funded even though Congress had not passed appropriations bills yet. This indicates to us that the reviewers believe in our technology and what we are doing."

Including the $1 million, the privately held company has received $5.7 million in grant funding from the NIH. In April it received a $100,000 grant to fund the first phase of the company's high-throughput GPCR activator screening technology related to chemokines. In September 2000, Icogen received a grant to fund the application of ISOPLeC in identifying an effector protein for sickle cell anemia therapy.

The company has received 17 such grants since its 1996 inception.

As molecules are identified in programs funded by the grants, partnerships with other biotechnology or pharmaceutical companies may be pursued. In the meantime, Icogen is developing drug programs internally, products born out of ISOPLeC technology.

Hagen said Icogen isolated the cDNA of 20 chemokine receptors that will be screened for inhibitors under the currently funded project. The 10-employee company, which expects to grow by 50 percent in the near term, also is working to develop a therapeutic to treat Alzheimer's disease. And Icogen is expanding a program to define substrate specificity and inhibitors of proteases.

"The common technology is ISOPLeC, and it's really using the same approach and the same technology in all of these different projects," Hagen said.

In addition to grants from the NIH, the company said it has subsisted on its own investments and those of private investors, as well as on contracted research activities for partners.

"The investment situation is extremely tough right now, so that really increases the importance of grant support for us," Hagen said, adding that Icogen has stayed away from venture capital in part because of a lack of need. "At different times we have pursued investments, but in some cases funding has come from other places - grants and contracts - that have lessened the need for venture investment."

Doing up-front discovery work has proven a viable source of income for Icogen. Just over a year ago, Icogen entered its fifth agreement with Stockholm, Sweden-based HemeBiotech A/S to develop a cell-based system for the production of an undisclosed therapeutic protein.

"The number of projects indicates how well we have worked and how pleased HemeBiotech is with what we have done," Hagen said. "That has been a very productive relationship."

Porphozym, an enzyme replacement therapeutic produced from Icogen's initial work with HemeBiotech, is entering Phase III trials to treat acute intermittent porphyria, a defect in the synthesis of the heme molecule. Other candidates produced through collaborative efforts with Icogen are designed to treat an unspecified genetic neurological disease and other genetic metabolic disorders.