Structural Biology

Sundia’s Structural Biology capability is supported by the experienced team from CalAsia Pharmaceuticals with more than 50 year combined experience. We have set up a seamless work flow to best facilitate the discovery process. The team has solved >120 novel proteins and 500+ co-crystal structures. The proteins include metabolic disease targets, kinases, nuclear hormone receptors, phosphodiesterases, proteases and memberane proteins among others. The team also has extensive experience in fragment-based lead generation.

COMPANY PROFILE

Discovery: CalAsia Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is an early stage pharmaceutical company focused on the rapid discovery of drug-like small molecules by utilizing its core technologies. In detail, CalAsia core technologies combine functional fragment screening with X-ray crystallography co-crystallization to rationally design and synthesize New Chemical Entities (NCEs) with drug-like properties. By differential fragment screening of closely related isotypes, CalAsia also develops selective NCEs early in the drug discovery process thereby increasing the quality of potential drug candidates. Currently, CalAsia has 6 internal drug-discovery programs for the treatment unmet medical needs for Parkinson Disease, Type II Diabetes, Inflammation, Prostate Cancer and Malaria. Of note, CalAsia team has decades of drug-discovery experience and has been involved in numerous drug-discovery programs that have resulted in multiple clinical candidates as well as one marketed drug.

Services: The CalAsia team provides its expertise; which includes cloning, recombinant protein expression (E. coli, Baculovirus & Yeast), recombinant protein purification, biochemical assays, cellular assays, fragment screening, and X-ray crystallography co-crystallization; to the drug discovery community through contract research.

KEY PEOPLE

G. Sridhar Prasad, PhD, Vice President of Research
Dr. Prasad has been the core member of drug discovery teams that successfully discovered multiple drug candidates that are currently at various stages of preclinical and clinical development, including MK-4965. He was the lead crystallographer and core member of the team that discovered NESINA - A Syrrx and Takeda San Diego's DPP-IV inhibitor Alogliptin, currently being marketed in Japan to treat type II diabetes. He designed, built and implemented fragment based crystallography screening technology platforms at Syrrx (Takeda), Merck and Metabasis. He has co-authored over 45 peer reviewed research articles, holds six US and international patents. He serves on the editorial board of Current Protein and Peptide Science (CPPS). Dr. Prasad obtained his Ph.D., from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India and post-doctoral training at University of Minnesota Medical School and the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, where he subsequently grew to the ranks of Assistant Professor.

Jeffrey W. Stebbins, PhD, Head of Biology
Dr. Stebbins has over 20 years of pharmaceutical research and development experience working in both large international companies (Roche, Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, and Eli-Lilly) and smaller biotechnology companies [Metabasis Therapeutics (a wholly owned subsidiary of Ligand Pharmaceuticals) and CalAsia Pharmaceuticals]. Since 2000, Dr. Stebbins has led numerous strategic projects for the metabolic disease indication directing both discovery and IND enabling studies. Of note, Dr. Stebbins led the first Diacylglycerol O-acytransferase-1 inhibitor project that delivered a clinical candidate [PF-04415060 (BAY 74-4113)] for the treatment of obesity. In 2011, Dr. Stebbins joined CalAsia Pharmaceuticals as the Vice President of Biology and is actively perusing development and commercialization of New Chemical Entities for the treatment of unmet medical needs.

COMPANY SERVICES

Services: The CalAsia team has over 50 year combined drug discovery experience and has solved >120 novel protein and 500+ co-crystal structures. The proteins include metabolic disease targets, kinases, nuclear hormone receptors, phosphodiesterases, proteases and memberane proteins among others. The team also has extensive experience in fragment-based lead generation. In addition to providing CRO services, the team has experience in developing multiple clinical candidates. We are fully equipped to provide the following services at our San Diego facility with the exception of data collection which is carried out at one of the three national synchrotron beam lines, ALS (Berkley), SSRL (Stanford) or APS (Argonne) year around.

• Molecular biology
• Protein expression and purification
• Assay development and screening
• Crystallization and structure determination of protein:ligand complexes
• Structure based hit identification and lead discovery
• Fragment screening: function and crystallography methods