The event was co-organized by the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Russia, Skolkovo, Russian Venture Company, ChemRar, RDI Group, Vienna Business Agency, and others.
"The accelerator's goal was to gather and select the most promising Russian projects in medication research and showcase them for a number of Russian and European partners," comments Konstantin Balakin, Leading Research Associate of the KFU Pharmaceutics Center.
Only 13 of the 300 candidate projects made it to the finals, and two of them were the fruits of Kazan University's labor.
KFU-01 is an anti-inflammation drug which was awarded at the 47th International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva.
KFU-05 is a new wide range antiseptic was introduced to the public this year at Biotechmed-2019 (Gelendzhik, Russia) and BioBridge-2019 (Vienna, Austria).
These two and KFU-02 (an anti-tumor medication) are supposed to enter the Russian market around 2023 - 2024.
Moreover, there are three more products being prepared for the market. KFU-03 is an anti-bacterial drug, KFU-04 is targeted against fungi, and KFU-06 is to treat epilepsy. All products have finished preclinical trials.
Regarding KFU-01, Dr. Balakin notes,
Rabbits and rats were injected with 500 mg per 1 kg of weight of KFU-01 for half a year. This is a huge dose, an equivalent of two to three full packs of medication for a human. Not only there were no lethal cases, but all the key biochemical parameters were within normal ranges. It's an absolutely unique level of safety."
KFU-01 can be taken once a day, which is less than the nearest analog - Naproxen. It's a huge advantage when a treatment course takes a few months.
As for KFU-05, Dr. Balakin says, 'Drug resistance is the main problem for antimicrobial therapy - antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral.' Just last year, 700 thousand people around the world died from drug-resistant infections. By 2050, over 10 million people a year will die annually because of that.
"We tested several bacterial generations up to the thirtieth. It so happened that 5th - 10th generations of bacteria already became resistant to existing antimicrobial medications," adds Balakin.
While designing KFU-05, the researchers paid special attention to preventing such hindrances. As of now, KFU-05 shows impressive antiseptic effectiveness against bacteria, fungi, protozoans, and viruses. Over 80 aggressive clinical strains have been tested.
Kazanites and their local partner Tatpharm are in search of international partners in those projects.
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