Article preview from Start-Up October 21, 2009
Paloma Pharmaceuticals Inc. is initially opting for an ophthalmology indication for its PI3K program. It plans to bring its lead compound, an allosteric inhibitor, into clinical trials for age-related macular degeneration in 2010. If all goes well, Paloma might move the same compound into a Phase I oncology trial later that year. Read on...
Article preview from Start-Up October 21, 2009
Paloma Pharmaceuticals Inc.
Inhibiting PI3K, initially for ophthalmology
37 Neillian Crescent
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
Phone: (617) 407-6314
Web Site: www.palomapharma.com
Contact: David Sherris, PhD, President & CEO
Industry Segment: Biotechnology
Business: PI3K inhibitors for multiple therapeutic indications
Founded: February 2005
Founder: David Sherris
Employees: 1
Financing to Date: $8 million
Investors: Private
Board of Directors: James Little, PhD, Linda Pullan, PhD
Advisors: Louis J. Kates (Starr, Finer, Starr LLP); James H. Belanger, JD (Burns & Levinson LLP); Ralph DeMartino, JD (private practice); F. Alec Orudjev, JD (Cozen O'Connor); Jay S. Duker, MD (Tufts University School of Medicine, New England Eye Center); Jason Slakter, MD (Vitreous-Retina-Macula Consultants of New York); Jeffery Heier, MD (Ophthalmic Consultants of Boston); Lee Rosen, MD (Premiere Oncology); Alice B. Gottlieb, MD, PhD (Tufts New England Medical Center)
Paloma Pharmaceuticals Inc. has no formal office space, no venture capital, and only one employee. This "virtual minimal" corporate structure suits president and CEO David Sherris just fine, and has ever since he founded the company in February 2005. Not only is the business named after his wife, so too is the family of PI3K-inhibiting compounds he aims to develop as treatments for a broad range of diseases and disorders including age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, solid and blood-borne cancers, AIDS, hepatitis C, psoriasis, pulmonary fibrosis, epilepsy, and more.
Paloma is by no means the only company with high hopes for the therapeutic potential of disrupting the PI3K pathway. Commercial and academic scientists around the world are keenly interested in the pathway, precisely because it is known to be activated in many disease states. The enzyme phosphoinositide-3-kinase (PI3K) has four isoforms, each of which is a potential drug target. Another promising target within the pathway is mTOR, a kinase protein recognized as the "mammalian target of rapamycin." Rapamycin was approved to prevent immune rejection of transplanted organs decades before the tools of molecular biology revealed mTOR's existence. Lately, rapamycin and analogs of it are being tested by companies, including Novartis AG, Wyeth (acquired by Pfizer Inc.), Merck & Co. Inc., and Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc. as treatments for cancer, in particular renal cancer. More and more, mTOR is coming to be seen a central regulator of key functions such as cell metabolism, cell proliferation, and angiogenesis. The molecule binds up with other proteins into complexes known as mTORC1 and mTORC2, and consequently both complexes singly and together are considered extremely promising drug targets.
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