MEDFORD, Mass. – May 8, 2009 – Ancora Pharmaceuticals scientific co-founder Dr. Louis Schofield has been awarded a $100,000 grant from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for his company’s research in treating malaria. The grant was one of 81 awarded as part of the foundation’s Grand Challenges Exploration initiative in fields that explore ways to improve health in developing countries.
“The Gates Foundation grant reflects continued confidence in Dr. Schofield and the Ancora team’s ability to create cost-effective malaria vaccines utilizing carbohydrate synthesis,” said John Pena, president of Ancora. “Our company’s breakthrough method of producing synthetic carbohydrates allows for approaches to bacterial, parasitic, and viral infectious diseases previously unattainable.”
Malaria afflicts up to ten percent of the global population resulting in between two and three million deaths per year. Because of global warming, the World Health Organization (WHO) has predicted that 50 percent of the population will be at risk of this disease by 2010.
“Up until this point, progress on a malaria vaccine has been slow,” said Dr. Schofield. “As an attempt to speed up the process, my Ancora colleagues and I have taken a different approach to fighting malaria, by targeting the parasite that causes the disease instead of the toxin produced by the parasite. The Gates grant will greatly accelerate the move to clinical trials.”
The Grand Challenges Explorations is a five-year $100 million initiative funded by the Gates Foundation to promote innovation in global health. The projects awarded focus on novel approaches to prevent and treat infectious diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and malaria.
Ancora Pharmaceuticals is a private biopharmaceutical company based in Medford, Massachusetts focused on developing immune system modulation therapeutics using synthetic carbohydrates. Ancora’s automated carbohydrate synthesizer is internationally recognized as the most advanced in the world. Synthetic carbohydrate therapeutics represents an untapped opportunity within the pharmaceutical industry to develop promising vaccines against some of today’s worst infectious diseases.
Ancora Pharmaceuticals Inc. is an emerging biotechnology company leveraging its state-of-the-art carbohydrate synthesis capability to enable carbohydrate-based drug discovery and defined oligosaccharide synthesis. The company is applying its synthesis technology both to internal drug development programs and strategic collaborations within the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector. Ancora is dedicated to the development of synthetic carbohydrate-based therapeutics including vaccines against infectious diseases such as malaria and therapeutics to treat cardiovascular and metabolic disease.
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