SALT LAKE CITY – March 22, 2009 – Ancora Pharmaceuticals co-founder and scientific advisor Peter Seeberger has been awarded the prestigious “Claude S. Hudson Award in Carbohydrate Chemistry” for his development of an automated carbohydrate synthesizer. Seeberger accepted the award, along with presenting his paper on the research, CARB 004, at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society being held in Salt Lake City this week.
Seeberger spoke at the meeting, reporting a major advance in creating carbohydrate-based vaccines. “Instead of years, the carbohydrates that may form the basis of revolutionary new vaccines and drugs to battle diseases such as malaria, HIV, neurological and cardiovascular diseases, now can be precisely synthesized to scale in a fraction of that time,” he said. “Ancora’s automated synthesizer is now one of the fastest methods to create complex carbohydrates.”
Just a few decades ago, scientists faced similar problems synthesizing DNA and protein-based molecules as they do today when working with carbohydrates. The introduction of automated DNA and protein-based synthesizers kick-started a revolution in genetics and proteomics—and an automated carbohydrate synthesizer can possibly do the same thing in the emerging fields of glycochemistry and glycobiology.
Ancora Pharmaceuticals, in collaboration with Prof. Seeberger’s lab at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, is using the carbohydrate synthesizer to discover and develop over a dozen vaccine candidates targeting some of today’s most serious antibiotic resistant infectious diseases. The most advanced candidate, a malaria vaccine, is in late-stage preclinical development and is headed for clinical trials by 2011.
Ancora Pharmaceuticals is a private, venture-backed 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 carbohydrates represents an untapped opportunity within the pharmaceutical industry to develop promising vaccines against bacterial, parasitic and viral infectious diseases.
The Claude S. Hudson Award in Carbohydrate Chemistry was established in 1946 and is administered by the American Chemical Society division of carbohydrate chemistry. This most prestigious award in its field, it recognizes outstanding contributions to carbohydrate chemistry, whether in education, research, or application.
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.
Copyright © 2008-2010 Ancora Pharmaceuticals Inc. All rights reserved.
200 Boston Avenue, Suite 4975, Medford, MA 02155
Web site design and development by Sky Dog Technologies.