 In a way, the entire state can take pride in the success of Velcura Therapeutics Inc., which will conduct clinical trials that could lead to a drug to both stop and restore the loss of human bone to disease.
“We’ll probably be first to market with a product that has both properties,” says Michael W. Long (pictured), the company’s founder, president and chief executive officer, adding that such a drug could be good news for about 200 million bone disease sufferers worldwide.
Started in 2001 as a spin-off firm from the University of Michigan, the biotechnology company procured $3.3 million through their Life Sciences Corridor initiative and $2 million from the 21st Century Jobs Fund. Velcura leveraged that money to land another $5.6 million from the National Institutes of Health, and from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
The company is using that funding to investigate a molecule called VEL-0230 as a treatment of diseases involving bone mineral disorders, such as bone loss related to multiple myeloma, bone metastases, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis.
Later this month, the company will start the first human clinical trials for VEL–0230.
“For a small biotech firm, it’s a very significant event,” Long says of the trials. “Very few get to this point. Most only last a couple of years.”
While state support helped Velcura get started, another boost came from exclusive licensing of the technology by the university to the company for developing bone disease therapies. That means that any therapies that make it to market down the road could result in royalties for UM.
Long believes it’s been a natural progression for both him and his former employer. As a UM professor for 20 years, he did a lot of work with pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology firms.
“During that time I developed a pretty good grasp of drug discovery and the people you needed to recruit in order to do it,” Long said. “I enjoyed being a professor, but I wanted to do something different.”
He determined an area of focus and how best to utilize his background and the resources available to him to begin making the change.
“Once we realized we had enough technology and a patent on discoveries, we knew we had enough to form a company,” Long says. By 2002, Velcura scientists had discovered how to grow human bone in tissue culture, which put them on the path to developing a bone–restoring drug.
Forming the company, Long says, involved bringing together the right scientists, ensuring excellence of the technology being used and assembling an experienced management team. Other keys, he said, included his team’s industry experience and the market potential – which is growing every day as the U.S. population ages.
And then there’s the matter of competitors – none of which have VEL–0230.
“The real trick is it restores bone,” Long says of the compound, which industry experts have dubbed the first in its class. “Most of the industry is looking to stop bone loss, and there are other things out there right now that work pretty well at doing that, but they still leave people at risk for fractures.”
Clinical trials can take three to five years depending on results, Long says, but he’s optimistic based on tests in primates and believes it bodes well for success in treating humans.
To prepare for that success, he’s been hard at work building relationships with venture capitalists for the more expensive testing to come. Long expects that to take the form of a strategic partnership with a big pharmaceutical company with the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to conduct clinical trials for hundreds of thousands of participants.
That prospects look good, he says, as such firms are about to lose exclusive rights to a number of drugs coming off patents in the next few years, making them more receptive to taking the risks of drug discovery.
“We’ve shown them that a small company can go all the way to clinical trials,” Long says. “Everything is predicated on good science. If the science isn’t excellent, nobody’s going to talk to you.”
-- By Tom Tigani, Daily Dash contributing writer |
