A new platform to create drugs for people with hard-to-treat cancers

A new round of support will help a Purdue University-affiliated startup further develop a platform designed to create drugs for people with hard-to-treat cancers.

Akanocure Pharmaceuticals Inc. has received a $750,000 Small Business Innovation Research Phase II grant from the National Science Foundation to develop chemical tools and platforms to produce valuable chemical building blocks.

These building blocks can be used to generate synthetically challenging compounds needed for advanced research in the pharmaceutical, agrochemical and veterinary industries.

We will use this award to advance our ability to develop more diverse libraries of molecules and create treatment options across multiple types of cancers."

Mohammad Noshi, Co-Founder and Principal Investigator

The platform was created in the laboratory of Philip Fuchs, Akanocure's chief scientific officer and Purdue's R. B. Wetherill Professor Emeritus of Organic Chemistry, who holds Purdue's highest research honor in the natural sciences, the McCoy Award .

Akanocure is located in the Purdue Research Park in West Lafayette. The startup co-founders received assistance from the Purdue Foundry, an entrepreneurship and commercialization hub housed in the Convergence Center for Innovation and Collaboration in Purdue's Discovery Park District, adjacent to the Purdue campus.

The Akanocure technology is licensed through the Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization.

"The support we received from the Purdue Foundry and the entire Purdue entrepreneurship community helped move this technology from the bench to commercialization at an almost unbelievable pace," said Sherine Abdelmawla, Akanocure co-founder, CEO, and Purdue Ph.D. alumna.