Snowdon

Therapeutic Areas:
Cancer, Acute and Chronic Pain, and Infectious Diseases

Snowdon is focused on three therapeutic areas that address significant medical needs in the nation and the world, including cancer, pain, and infectious diseases.

Cancer
Cancer is predicted to become the leading cause of death, surpassing heart disease by the end of this decade. Despite significant progress in our understanding of the molecular defects that contribute to the development of cancer, this complex disease remains a significant health problem. At Snowdon, we have discovered a novel family of orally active antimitotic agents for the treatment of cancer. [more]

Acute and Chronic Pain
Pain is widely studied, but significantly undertreated. Severe pain, whether acute or chronic, is practically inescapable in every person’s life. Pain is associated with many prevalent diseases including arthritis, cancer, diabetes, and HIV-AIDS, as well as with common problems such as injuries, back pain, and postoperative pain. The need for safe and effective pain medications is currently substantial and will continue to grow as life expectancies rise. To address this need, Snowdon has discovered a novel family of small-molecule compounds to relieve serious pain but without the negative side effects such as constipation and addiction associated with narcotics such as morphine. [more]

Infectious Diseases
Parasitic diseases such as Toxoplasmosis, Cryptosporidiosis, Cyclosporiasis, Babesiosis, and Malaria were long considered obscure tropical afflictions. Today, these diseases are recognized as deadly infections to people dealing with immune disorders such as HIV-AIDS, to pregnant women and their babies, and as global threats of bioterrorism.

Aside from their direct effects as human diseases, these parasitic agents also cause enormous crop and livestock loss accounting for billions of dollars in expenditures or lost revenues in agriculture. Vaccines are non-existent for these parasitic diseases and drug treatment is a constant challenge due to the development of resistance by the parasites, serious adverse reactions, and a lack of knowledge of their mechanisms of action.

In response to the dangers posed by these parasitic agents, Snowdon has discovered simple drug-like molecules that are highly potent mechanism-based inhibitors of an essential protein-protein interaction unique to this family of parasites and thus not found in humans or other mammals. Our lead compounds are deadly to these parasites, yet are non-toxic to mice. This particular protein-protein interaction is universal among all members of this parasite family, hence our inhibitors are designed to exhibit broad-spectrum activity against a wide range of diseases. Based on our understanding of their mechanism of action, we believe that these compounds would be effective prophylactically to actually prevent the onset of infection or therapeutically to treat existing infections. Moreover, our molecules can be synthesized in high yield at low cost using common starting materials. [more]