A Charlottesville biotechnology company has received a $4.3 million federal grant to create a database detailing how certain drugs affect the human body.
HemoShear LLC received the grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health, according to a news release from the company.
The grant will allow HemoShear researchers to profile the effects of 50 known drugs on the human blood vessel system using the company’s human surrogate technology, the release said.
This technology, called HemoShear, allows researchers to conduct valid scientific experiments without using human patients.
“We are very excited to receive such a significant grant from the NHLBI to fund this work,” said Brian Wamhoff, co-founder and vice president of research and development at HemoShear. “The pharmaceutical industry has limited ability to meaningfully assess in vitro the human vascular effects of the compounds they are developing.
“With the increasing safety demands of regulatory bodies like the FDA, new technologies are urgently needed to accurately predict the effects of new drug compounds in humans and understand how to interpret drug effects in animal studies. We are excited to be able to apply our science and technology in this critical area.”
The database will be valuable in predicting the safety of new drug candidates, the release said.
“The importance and power of the HemoShear technology is only beginning to be understood,” said Robert Ruffolo Jr., advisory board member at HemoShear. “We already know that the technology can play a role in identifying and validating new molecular targets in the vascular system from which new drugs can be designed.
“We now believe the technology will be able to play an important role in predicting both vascular efficacy and side effects of drug candidates earlier in the drug discovery process and thereby reduce the risk of failure in pharmaceutical research and development.”
HemoShear is a biotechnology research company that works with pharmaceutical companies to accelerate drug discovery and development, the release said.
This is the third small-business innovation research grant from the NIH the company has received in the last two years.
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