URI graduate students launch pharmaceutical company

FROM LEFT, Nicholas DaSilva, Kenneth Rose and Benjamin Barlock, doctoral students at the University of Rhode Island’s College of Pharmacy, which is part of the Academic Health Collaborative, launched a drug development company, Alcinous. They discuss their venture in the pharmacy building on the Kingston Campus in early June. /COURTESY NORA LEWIS
FROM LEFT, Nicholas DaSilva, Kenneth Rose and Benjamin Barlock, doctoral students at the University of Rhode Island’s College of Pharmacy, which is part of the Academic Health Collaborative, launched a drug development company, Alcinous. They discuss their venture in the pharmacy building on the Kingston Campus in early June. /COURTESY NORA LEWIS

SOUTH KINGSTOWN – Three doctoral students at the University of Rhode Island’s College of Pharmacy have started a company that harnesses big data in a new approach to drug development.

Nicholas DaSilva of Providence, Kenneth Rose of South Kingstown and Benjamin Barlock of Portland, Maine, founded Alcinous Pharmaceuticals late last year. David Worthen, a former College of Pharmacy faculty member and longtime pharmaceuticals consultant, is chief operations officer.

“We have always had an entrepreneurial spirit,” Rose said in the URI statement. He and DaSilva had often discussed applying their interest in science to a business venture. Last fall, they sought advice from Frank S. Menniti, a faculty member at URI’s George and Anne Ryan Institute for Neuroscience and chief science officer of MindImmune Therapeutics, a pharmaceutical company based at URI, before plunging into entrepreneurship.

“A lot of this is for the love of it, the learning experience,” DaSilva said in the statement.

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CEO DaSilva, Chief Scientific Officer Rose and Chief Technology Officer Barlock have invested countless hours to the startup, working at home on nights and weekends while pursuing their doctorates. “We are grad students by day and executives by night,” DaSilva said.

Alcinous uses computational software that is freely available on the Internet to sort through 40 million possible drug-binding targets. Using their knowledge of chemistry and pharmacology, the students selected five non-traditional protein binding targets for drug action. “We identified them by conducting extensive literature reviews and using binding-site prediction software,” Rose said.

Alcinous seeks to develop new drug therapies for breast and ovarian cancers caused by the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations, targeting a class of oncology drugs known as Poly ADP-Ribose Polymerase inhibitors or PARP inhibitors. These drugs are typically a third line of defense, given their severe side effects. DaSilva and Rose believe that, by looking at highly specific and uninvestigated binding targets, Alcinous can develop PARP inhibitor compounds that are safe and highly effective with fewer side effects.

DaSilva said there is strong precedent for their strategy. Small firms are increasingly handling the first stages of drug development, given technology improvements that can mine big data without a large staff. Such companies can then gain the attention of big pharmaceutical companies, which complete development and get the drug to market.

However, the timelines and protocols for drug development still demand patience, persistence and perseverance. While still in the pre-clinical research phase, Alcinous is courting private investors to help the company advance to in-depth clinical research in the next year or two.

Alcinous also is pursuing State of Rhode Island innovation grants and other incentives for biotechnology entrepreneurs. The resources and expertise found at URI and across Rhode Island are why they chose to incorporate Alcinous here, DaSilva said. The company’s name stems from Greek mythology, in which King Alcinous (which means “mighty mind”) helped Odysseus — hero of Homer’s “The Odyssey” — return home. Rose said that he and his partners hope Alcinous will help cancer patients return to health.

And if success is initially elusive, they hope to “fail fast and fail hard” and keep going. “If one of these targets doesn’t work,” Rose said, of the five compounds under evaluation, “we have 39 million 995 thousand to go.”

 

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