Fuzionaire Diagnostics Announces Disease-Agnostic Platform to Radiolabel Any Molecule for Disease Diagnosis and Drug Discovery
Radiopharmaceutical company leverages breakthrough chemistry discovery to help clinicians diagnose any disease and accelerate drug discovery
PASADENA, Calif., Aug. 28, 2018 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Fuzionaire Diagnostics ("Fuzionaire Dx"), a radiopharmaceutical company unlocking the full power of positron emission tomography (PET), today launched its proprietary radiolabeling platform. Leveraging a fundamental breakthrough in alkali metal catalysis, Fuzionaire Dx is helping clinicians and researchers study and cure debilitating diseases, earlier, and with unprecedented precision. The platform is able to radiolabel any molecule at record-breaking speed, resulting in lower-cost, more targeted, and more effective radiopharmaceuticals.
Fuzionaire Dx's patented method makes it possible to create fluorine-18 radiopharmaceuticals that contain a novel class of stabilized silicon-fluorine bond, a process that is much more efficient and uses existing radiochemistry infrastructure. These efficiency gains not only lower costs, they dramatically reduce the time it takes to prepare radiotracers. This is vital given the short (i.e., 109.8 min) half-life of the fluorine-18 radioisotope.
As a result, molecular imaging techniques like PET will be able to image a much broader range of biological targets and a greater breadth of diseases. This radiolabeling method also reduces the amount of off-target imaging and produces images with greater specificity and image clarity.
"Until now, no platform has existed to radiolabel any ligand with fluorine-18, and especially not with our speed," said co-founder and CEO Nick Slavin. "We've developed a tool that will both enable the non-invasive diagnostic imaging market to enter a new era, and accelerate drug discovery programs to allow pharmaceutical companies to more effectively develop breakthrough therapies."
The company is starting with diagnostics, where PET imaging is already used in the clinic for oncological, cardiovascular, and neurological applications to study, monitor, diagnose, and treat debilitating diseases.
PET imaging is also valuable from the earliest stages of drug discovery, providing unique pharmacokinetic information for new drug candidates and quantification of drug properties in vivo. Fuzionaire Dx's radiolabeling platform can make PET a ubiquitous, essential, and cost-effective tool that improves decision-making and increases returns on R&D investment throughout virtually all stages of the drug development process.
Several leading clinical research centers and foundations are leveraging Fuzionaire Dx's radiolabeling platform to study and treat traditionally challenging diseases in areas such as neurology and oncology.
"As we enter the world of precision medicine, Fuzionaire Dx provides technology that could help track and image cancers in an unprecedented way, which will ultimately allow for many novel approaches in cancer therapeutics," said Douglas Scherr, MD, Professor of Oncology and Clinical Director of Urologic Oncology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University.
Fuzionaire Dx's technology is based on a breakthrough discovery by Anton Toutov during his PhD studies under Nobel Laureate Robert Grubbs at Caltech creating a new branch of catalysis based on Earth-abundant alkali metals like potassium and sodium.
Until now, producing a catalytic reaction has generally required either the use of rare, expensive metals or high temperature and pressures.
This discovery makes it possible to initiate chemical processes at ambient temperatures and pressures without using precious metals, lowering cost, improving efficiency, and unlocking previously unthinkable chemical reactions.
"Our mission is to apply our core technology to build solutions that can tangibly improve the human condition," said co-founder and CSO Anton Toutov. "We have the same primary goal of any healthcare worker, which is to save and improve lives. By improving the underlying chemistry of existing processes and inventing new ones, we are unlocking untapped potential to do just that."
Fuzionaire Dx is led by co-founders Nick Slavin (CEO), Anton Toutov, PhD (CSO), and
Nova Spivack. The company is also supported by a team of world-class advisors, including Michael Phelps, the inventor of PET, Jason Lewis, former president of the World Molecular Imaging Society, and Kristin Swanson, a mathematical oncologist at the Mayo Clinic whose research interests include clinical trial design and mathematical modeling for the treatment of patients with brain cancer.
To learn more, please visit: http://www.fuzionairedx.com
SOURCE Jones Dilworth Inc
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