NIH awards $2.6 million to local company with ties to program

Dec. 4, 2009

The National Institutes of Health awarded a $2.6 million grant to the Interthyr Corporation to develop a new drug that potentially could treat cancer and autoimmune diseases such as diabetes. The project is a partnership with Ohio University.

Interthyr CEO Leonard Kohn, who recently retired from the faculty of the College of Osteopathic Medicine, the Edison Biotechnology Institute, and the biomedical engineering program, will work with an Ohio University research team consisting of BME faculty members Doug Goetz, chemical and biomolecular engineering, Kelly McCall and Frank Schwartz, specialty medicine, Stephen Bergmeier and Mark McMills, chemistry and biochemistry, and Ramiro Malgor, biomedical sciences.  Preliminary lab studies have shown that the drug can slow the growth of cancer cells and inhibit key processes in autoimmune-inflammatory diseases.

The BME program’s first graduate, Anthony Schwartz, was the lead author on a published scientific paper that described the drug’s effect on cancer.