Two UB drug development and discovery projects have received investments from the Empire Discovery Institute.
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One project focuses on an immunotherapy platform — developed by UB pharmacy researcher Sathy Balu-Iyer and his team — that could benefit patients who are receiving gene therapy for a variety of diseases. The other will seek to design a therapy for multiple sclerosis (MS) that leverages a novel drug target discovered by a team led by UB medical researcher M. Laura Feltri.
The institute will advance both efforts through its Medicines Discovery Award Program, a competitive incubator and accelerator program designed to identify and advance promising early-stage drug discovery into early "proofs of concept." Successful projects will exit the program as either a licensing transaction to a strategic pharmaceutical partner or as an Empire Discovery Institute-created startup company.