By Sean Lewis
WisBusiness.com
MADISON — Chemotherapy… The word is enough to put shivers down your spine. Everyone knows what chemotherapy means: cancer. And if cancer isn’t bad enough you get the side effects of chemotherapy: losing hair, exhaustion and nausea.
What if there were a drug that would help cure cancer more effectively than current techniques, such as chemotherapy, and with fewer side effects? That is the goal of the scientists and experienced entrepreneurs behind Quintessence Biosciences, Inc.
UW-Madison chemists Laura Kiessling and Ron Raines are internationally acclaimed. Along with serial entrepreneur Ralph Kauten, president Dr. Laura Strong and licensed technology from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, Quintessence is moving ahead with commercialization of its “Evade” ribonuclease technology.
The Evade ribonuclease technology “attacks the entire strand of RNA and breaks it all up,” Kauten said, thus preventing cancer cells from forming. The first drug Quintessence will introduce is called QBI-139, which takes a new approach to cancer cells.
In simplest terms, each cell contains DNA, this DNA creates RNA, and the RNA produces proteins that enable the cell to divide. Cancer cells, like any other cell, feed on proteins and spread. By eliminating the proteins, Quintessence is shutting down the cancer cells ability to spread.
The best part about the whole process is that, so far, tests haven’t detected any visible signs of side effects.
“In all our preliminary tests conducted with mice, QBI-139 has shown to decrease the size of cancerous tumors time and time again,” Kauten said.
The future for Quintessence appears bright, given the competitive world of drug development. The company is conducting studies with larger animals and plans to apply early this year for U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to begin human tests.
“I am extremely confident that we will be successful and be able to begin clinical testing,” Kauten said.
To date, Quintessence has raised more than $8 million dollars from private investors and from federal grants. This money will go towards manufacturing the large amounts of QBI-139 drug that is need to perform the proper tests, which will be used to treat prostate, ovarian and pancreatic cancer.
The future doesn’t just stop there for Quintessence. In late November the company was given permission to start two new product programs.
One will involve a new protein that is derived from a natural human protein. The other program will work with new biotechnology involving targeting mechanisms, where scientists will be able to tell a drug directly where to go in the body. Quintessence officials said this new targeting mechanism will only increase QBI-139’s power at attacking tumors.
“It is very important that everything we do is done with good science,” Kauten said.
Lewis recently graduated from the UW-Madison Department of Life Sciences Communication.
