BioWorld International Correspondent

Rheoscience A/S is applying more than 40 years of collective experience in researching the role of the hypothalamus in regulating food intake.

Rheoscience, a Danish start-up focused on the identification of novel targets associated with obesity and related metabolic disorders, was spun out in March from the Center for Clinical and Basic Research A/S, a private research foundation based in Ballerup.

Its target discovery platform is an animal model of obesity comprising a population of rats that has been selectively bred over 30 generations. The initial selection was carried out on the basis of urinary secretion of catecholamines. The long-term breeding program has yielded two subgroups - one that develops obesity when subjected to an energy-rich diet and one that is resistant to becoming obese regardless of its energy intake.

The company is searching for differences in gene expression between the two subgroups that could account for these divergent phenotypes. "It is not a single gene. It is definitely a polygenetic trait," Rheoscience CEO and co-founder Philip Larsen told BioWorld International. The same holds true in human populations, he said, as a single gene effect is apparent in just 1 percent to 2 percent of the obese population.

The company is focusing its efforts on the hypothalamus, the region of the brain that plays a central coordinating role in controlling energy homeostasis. "We think we know where to pick [out] the differentially expressed genes," Larsen said. "We basically go on a fishing expedition, but we know which waters to fish in and we also have much better bait than people have used previously."

The company is capable of identifying and amplifying gene products associated with individual neurons. "That is really the whole trick," Larsen said. Other groups have taken that approach, he said, but only in a monogenetic context. Rheoscience is the first to work at the single-cell level while analyzing the expression of multiple genes associated with energy homeostasis, he said.

It has identified around a dozen candidate targets, which it is subjecting to further validation in a number of physiological models and under different physiological conditions. It aims to partner with companies that possess compound libraries, which it would screen against qualified targets.

The company, which employs 20 people, filed its first patent application last week. It has yet to secure equity investment. "We are not quite there. We are in the process of raising funding," Larsen said.

Rheoscience, which was co-founded by Niels Vrang and Mads Tang-Christensen, is the second spin-off from the CCBR. It follows Osteopro A/S, which merged last year with Osteometer Biotech A/S to form Nordic Bioscience A/S, of Herlev, Denmark.