Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, its CRDMO arm Aurigene and Stanford spinout Kainomyx are teaming up to develop an anti-malarial drug with a new mechanism of action.
In the partnership, Kainomyx will develop the drug with its platform, which targets cytoskeletal proteins of parasites, while Aurigene develops “cost-effective and scalable drug chemistry.” Dr. Reddy’s will handle the regulatory and market access aspects. The companies announced their non-binding memorandum of understanding Tuesday.
James SpudichKainomyx executive chairman James Spudich wrote in a statement that “new drug discovery for Malaria and other parasitic diseases is essential because drug resistance to existing therapeutics is rapidly developing.”
The World Health Organization has identified the emergence of drug-resistant parasites as “a major threat to malaria control.”
“Through our decades of work, we have developed a deep understanding of how cytoskeletal proteins work,” Spudich added. “Cytoskeletal proteins are essential for all living organisms, and we are exploiting this to specifically target the cytoskeleton for treatment of malaria.”
Spudich founded California-based Kainomyx in 2019. He was also a founder of Cytokinetics, which helped launch Kainomyx, and MyoKardia, which was acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb in 2020.
Kainomyx scored a $1.97 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2021 and raised $6 million in a financing round that same year for its malaria program and programs in other parasitic diseases.