Jan 20 2011
The University of Maryland, Baltimore's (UMB) Office of Technology Transfer has completed a license agreement with Bali BioSciences LLC, an early-stage company pursuing an unusual, yet clever, strategy to combat disease.
The company, together with its affiliated operating company Bali Medical Inc., is developing a medical food product as adjunctive therapy for patients with burn- and trauma-related sepsis, HIV/AIDS, and other endotoxin-mediated diseases.
"Our concept is to vaccinate dairy cows with an anti-sepsis vaccine and harvest colostrum [immune milk] that is enriched with highly specific yet broadly cross-reactive antibodies against endotoxin. The enhanced colostrum-based product will aid patients by reducing the nutritional deficits associated with burns, trauma, and HIV/AIDS," said Bali BioSciences CEO and founder Zeil Rosenberg, MD, MPH.
A specialized anti-sepsis vaccine was developed by Alan Cross, MD, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and his colleagues at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, and Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island.
The vaccine has already proven safe in human trials, and showed protective efficacy in various animal models. Thus, it has potential for use in both prevention and treatment of sepsis. UMB technology transfer officials completed a royalty-bearing license for the jointly owned technology and related patent rights to Bali BioSciences. There are also plans for a sponsored research collaboration to tap into Dr. Cross' considerable expertise to aid the company's early research and development efforts.
There are more than 33 million people worldwide living with HIV, which constitutes a significant population in need of adjunctive nutritional therapy. "Bali BioSciences will help address that need with its affordable medical food product," says James L. Hughes, MBA, Vice President for Research and Development at UMB.
SOURCE University of Maryland, Baltimore
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