GUILD ASSOCIATES INC — Department of Health and Human Services SBIR Phase I: DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Guild proposes to develop an antisense oligomer-based
GUILD ASSOCIATES INC — SBIR Phase I award from Department of Health and Human Services.
- Amount
- $170,092
- Agency
- Department of Health and Human Services · National Institutes of Health
- Program / Phase
- SBIR · Phase I
- Solicitation
- PA13-234
- NAICS
- —
- Place of performance
- OH
- Period
- —
Description
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Guild proposes to develop an antisense oligomer-based antifungal effective against the human pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus. With a 40%-60% mortality rate, invasive aspergillosis (IA) due to A. fumigatus now surpasses invasive candidiasis as the most frequent fungal cause of death, especially amongst immunocompromised patients. Successful therapy for IA with current antifungals is notoriously difficult due to poor clinical efficacy and the increasing emergence of drug resistant strains. Despite this acute need for novel therapeutic strategies, there has not been a new class of antifungals targeting A. fumigatus developed in over 12 years. Therefore, a novel approach is urgently needed to develop new anti-Aspergillus targeting strategies. Phosphorodiamidate morpholino oligomers (PMOs), synthetic uncharged analogs of nucleic acids, are an antisense biotechnology that functions by base pairing with target gene mRNA, producing steric blockade of the translational machiner