BioVinc has created an advanced bisphosphonate bone targeting platform technology to develop skeletal selective therapeutic and diagnostic products to address several unmet medical needs. This endeavor has generated development leads that include bone selective antibiotics for the treatment of severe osteomyelitis and jaw infections, anticancer drugs effective in multiple myeloma, a therapy for osteonecrosis of the jaw in oral surgery patients and multiple imaging probes for the early diagnosis bone diseases. In-vivo proof of concept data and a significant proprietary position have been established in each of these project areas. The company is now working to develop these promising leads through to clinical evaluation. Our leading focus is an antibacterial therapy to prevent and treat bone infections/osteomyelitis, with an advanced development lead for prosthetic joint related infections. We have also developed a pipeline of IP and future development products from our platform technology. Further validating the strength of its platform, BioVinc has received impressive funding from the National Institute of Health (NIH) in the form of six (non-dilutive) Phase I small business grant awards (SBIR/STTR), and four Phase II SBIR/STTR awards.
Our team and current working network of collaborators represent a world leading expertise in the use and development of drugs from bisphosphonate chemistry that has formerly produced several billion dollar therapies for the treatment of osteoporosis and the skeletal complications of cancer bone metastases. In particular, BV President/CSO and co-founder Dr. Frank (Hal) Ebetino was a member of the team that discovered and developed the bisphosphonate drug Actonel® for Osteoporosis at Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals. BV founder and long-time academic bisphosphonate researcher, Professor Charles McKenna has also developed multiple exciting antiviral and anti-cancer drug candidates. Together with co-founder and CEO, Dr. Shuting Sun, another medicinal chemistry expert, and bone pharmacology expert Dr. Mark Lundy, Director of Biology, they leveraged their many years of bisphosphonate mechanistic expertise to design new bone targeted diagnostic probes to advance the understanding of bisphosphonate pharmacokinetics on the skeleton. The BV Platform Bone Targeting Technology has been further developed by this team to offer safer and more efficacious therapies and diagnostic agents based on this tissue selective drug design approach. Most recently, the company was awarded a phase I STTR grant award with the University of Southern California based on its preclinical success with early prototype bone selective PET scanning probes. BV continues to develop product opportunities in multiple therapeutic areas, including infectious bone disease, multiple myeloma and other bone cancers, arthritis, and related dental applications.
For more details, please contact Dr. Frank (Hal) Ebetino (halebetino@biovinc.com) or Dr. Shuting Sun (shuting.sun@biovinc.com).
