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Skolkovo joins fight against cancer
by Oleg Nikishenkov at 10/11/2011 The Moscow News
The three ventures, Asinex Medchem, Fusion Pharma and NewVac, focus on alternative methods to curing the often fatal disease at an advanced stage by localizing cancerous cells using inhibitors. The grants are part of the Skolkovo Foundation’s drive to turn the hub into a leading world player in the innovation sector. Also this week, the fund announced plans to boost funding in startup projects in partnership with U.S. Software giant Microsoft. Fusion Pharma General Director Ghermes Chilov told The Moscow News that the funding provided by Skolkovo, along with separate funding from an unnamed “big Russian pharmaceutical company,” would help the India-based firm take its research to the clinical testing stage. The firm has developed a way of using computer software to simulate molecules that can enter a cancerous growth and destroy it. Chilov said the computer-generated molecules were capable of curing even highly resistant strains of cancer. “With our technology we were able to conduct the necessary tests with just 20 synthesized molecules, while it takes thousands to get to this stage of tests with current technologies,” Chilov said. Igor Goryanin, head of the Skolkovo biomedical cluster and a professor at Edinburgh University told The Moscow News on the sidelines of a startup event in Moscow on Tuesday that the Invitro network of independent medical laboratories found that the cancer inhibitors made by Fusion Pharma in Russia were more effective than any others the firm has built. President Medvedev meeting with young entrepreneurs at Skolkovo Biomedicine is one of the key fields of research at the Skolkovo hub and the cluster, which is being developed in cooperation with the Baker and McKenzie international consultancy, has chosen oncology as a top priority in terms of its commercialization perspectives. Goryanin said that Skolkovo coordinated its cancer treatment program with the Russian Health Ministry, which has named lung cancer as the number one cancer threat for Russia. “According to the Ministry’s latest research, 90 percent of all patients who are diagnosed with the disease die within a year,” Goryanin said. NewVac, one of the other firms that was awarded Skolkovo funding, uses research developed by Russian medical scientist Mikhail Sitkovsky, who has spent the past 20 years working in the United States. The Russian-based firm has developed medicines for fighting cancer’s resistance to destruction by the human immune system, which it presented to the Kremlin’s modernization commission earlier this year. Medvedev told the commission that if NewVac’s research is successful, it would be “a revolution in history of the fight against the cancer” and will allow the Skolkvovo project to be considered a success. Although one of NewVac’s oncologic vaccines has already been registered with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Sitkovsky told the commission that the company welcomes the Skolkovo funding since it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain sponsorship in the United States. The third company to be awarded funding on Tuesday, Asinex Medchem, has invented special molecules that can enter the human brain and destroy brain cancer cells. “Our brain has a special cellular defense barrier, which does not let alien substances get inside, and medicine is also an alien substance for it. But our medicine can bypass this defense,” Deputy Director Denis Kazyulkin told The Moscow News.
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The Skolkovo Foundation is pushing ahead in the race to find a cure to cancer, awarding three biopharmaceutical startups grants this week to conduct research at the innovation hub near Moscow.