ITI Life Sciences looks for partners in ubiquitin drug discovery

Partnership opportunity

The publicly funded technology commercialisation company ITI Life Sciences  wants to fund R&D in the field of ubiquitin signalling, and is looking for partners.

The call for expressions of interest follows the completion of a “foresighting” report on emerging drug targets. Dundee-based ITI Life Sciences says the report singles out ubiquitin as having significant potential, and it wants to set up a drug discovery programme in the field.

Responses are invited from companies, agencies, institutes, academia and individuals. There are no geographical restrictions and the company says it welcomes responses from outside the UK.

The ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS), discovered in 1980, is implicated in key protein degradation mechanisms via a small protein named ubiquitin. Ubiquitin has been linked to a range of additional key cellular functions and diseases including cancer, neurodegenerative, metabolic, inflammatory and infectious diseases.

Analysis by ITI Life Sciences of the scientific and commercial landscape shows that the UPS provides a rich source of drug targets, yet it remains a relatively unexploited and largely uncharted area for drug discovery.

Eleanor Mitchell, acting CEO, says, “We believe ubiquitin signalling is a very exciting area for drug discovery R&D, but at present it has not yet reached a level to attract substantial venture capital funding. However, it is at the right stage of development for ITI Life Sciences to fund, as we are uniquely poised to bridge the funding gap between academic and commercial R&D.”

To date, ITI Life Sciences has invested over £50 million of public money in five research programmes in the fields of stem cell technologies, text mining, transgenic screening and safety models, cardiac biomarkers, and lifetime fluorescence assays.

The company provides funding to cover the development costs of delivering the programme, while its programme managers coordinate the various partners. It selects programmes based on assessing future market needs, identifying technology opportunities, and responding to ideas, initiatives and proposals from the research and business communities.