Kadmon Pharmaceuticals and Nano Terra have formed a joint venture called NT Life Sciences, which will give Kadmon, a permanent, global license to three clinical-stage product candidates of Nano Terra still under laboratory tests, besides Nano Terra’s Pharmacomer Technology, a drug discovery system. The new subsidiary will be jointly owned by the two companies.
The solutions were developed by Surface Logix, a company started by Harvard chemist, Professor George M. Whitesides, and acquired by Nano Terra. The technologies concentrate on developments in the functions of pharma products at the molecular level to enable nano-scale drug delivery.
The product candidates, SLx-2119, SLx-4090 and SLx-211, are in the initial to middle level lab tests for multiple diseases through multiple pathways by restricting enzymes including ROCK2 (Rho-associated coiled-coiled kinase 2), the target of SLx-2119 MTP (enterocytic microsomal triglyceride transfer protein), the target of SLx-4090, and PDE5 (phosphodiesterase 5), the target of SLx-2101. Initial tests of ROCK2 in vivo have revealed that SLx-2119, a selective ROCK2 inhibitor, could have medical applications in multiple diseases such as metabolic syndrome, diabetes, cancer, autoimmune diseases and spinal cord injury. ROCK2 creates a signaling route that changes cell shape and movement in reaction to multiple stimuli.