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'Neurochips' in the Works 2 Md. Firms Targeting Brain Diseases By Terence Chea Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, August 8, 2001; Page E05 Two Maryland biotechnology start-ups are teaming up to create and market a new type of biological sensor intended to help researchers study diseases of the brain and develop drugs to treat them. NeuralStem Inc. of College Park and MetriGenix Inc. of Gaithersburg announced yesterday that they have reached an agreement to jointly create a series of "neurochips" -- sensors that could be used to predict how potential drugs affect the brain. "These chips will help researchers discover drugs faster and more cheaply," said Richard Garr, NeuralStem's president and chief executive. He said the chips also would help pharmaceutical companies develop drugs with fewer side effects. The neurochips will be developed using MetriGenix's Flow-Thru Chip technology and NeuralStem's patented stem cells. The two companies did not reveal financial terms of the deal. NeuralStem owns rights to neural stem cells -- cells that can give rise to more specialized cells of the central nervous system. The company, founded in 1996, eventually hopes to use the cells to treat a variety of neurological diseases by transplanting them in patients' brains. But its short-term strategy focuses on using the cells to help researchers develop drugs for these ailments. "This is the first commercialization of stem-cell technology," Garr said. "People were thinking of transplantation, but the ability to model human systems in a dish is really the beginning of reaching the promise of stem-cell technology." MetriGenix, which has 15 employees, is a spinoff of Gene Logic Inc., a Gaithersburg company that sells access to genetic information to biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. Established as a separate business last month, the company has raised $15 million to develop the Flow-Thru Chip, a new type of sensor for collecting genetic data. Such sensors, known as microarrays, are used by researchers to study biological activity. Affymetrix Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., the world's leading maker of microarrays, makes glass chips etched with thousands of genes. The chips are used to detect and analyze genetic activity associated with various diseases and drugs. The market for microarrays is expected to grow from its current $300 million to $400 million to $4 billion to $5 billion over the next five to 10 years, Garr said. MetriGenix and NeuralStem plan to make more specialized chips that focus on specific conditions associated with the brain. For example, one type of neurochip might contain 50 to 100 genes associated with Parkinson's disease. A researcher could screen a compound against the chip to see how the compound affects those genes. The company plans to make neurochips focused on depression, Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia, among other conditions. MetriGenix and NeuralStem hope to deliver its first product in six to nine months. It will be a chip packed with genes associated with toxic effects in the brain. The companies plan to sell the chips to biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. "It would potentially enable pharmaceutical researchers to screen their drug candidates for their effectiveness and/or toxic effects early in the drug-discovery process," said Andrew O'Beirne, MetriGenix's president and chief executive. "So they only need to take forward drugs that appear to be effective and have minimal toxicity into more expensive testing programs." SOURCE: The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45738-2001Aug7.html * * * ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn