Office of Corporate Alliances, University of Rochester Medical Center

Connecting corporate and academic researchers to advance science and human health

  

 

OyaGen Inc.

With the AIDS pandemic tallying 40 million cases and a projected increase of 5 million more annually, anti-HIV therapeutics has developed into a $6 billion a year industry. Regrettably, HIV is resistant to currently available drugs in 40 percent of new cases. OyaGen Inc. was formed in 2003 for the purpose of discovering, developing, and commercializing novel pharmaceutical therapies that have a proprietary mechanism of action. Based on technology developed by Harold Smith, Ph.D., Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at URMC and Hui Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University, OyaGen exploits an innate defense mechanism of HIV resistance.

About 5 percent of those infected with HIV develop AIDS very slowly or not at all. These patients have higher amounts of a key editing enzyme, hA3G (also known as CEM15 or APOBEC-3G) in their white blood cells. The enzyme promotes critical mutations in the HIV genome and prevents its replication. In most AIDS sufferers, however, hA3G is disabled by a viral protein, viral infectivity factor (Vif). OyaGen’s therapeutic strategy employs a peptide, Vif Dimerization Antagonist (VDA) to inhibit the maturation of Vif to its active form. Without active Vif, white blood cells are free to employ hA3G in the neutralization of HIV. OyaGen’s lead compounds have demonstrated efficacy in in vitro studies on human cell systems and are currently in preclinical development.  It  is believed that HIV will be unable to readily evolve strains resistant to VDAs.

OyaGen was founded with seed funding from the University Technology Seed Fund managed by Trillium Group and completed an equity financing of $1.5 million in 2005. OyaGen has its headquarters and labs in Rochester, NY.  The company employs four people.

Visit Oyagen on the web for more information.