Vascular BioSciences Awarded $1.2 Million Contract from the NHLBI’s Vascular Interventions/Innovations and Therapeutic Advances (VITA) Program to Develop CAR Peptide Therapeutic Adjuvant for PAH Targeted Therapy

Jan 02, 2014
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Vascular BioSciences Awarded $1.2 Million Contract from the NHLBI’s Vascular Interventions/Innovations and Therapeutic Advances (VITA) Program to Develop CAR Peptide Therapeutic Adjuvant for PAH Targeted Therapy

Durham, NC – Vascular BioSciences (VBS) announced the award of a $1.2 million, milestone-based, 3-year contract from the National Heart Lung Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to expedite the development of CAR therapeutic peptide for pulmonary hypertension under NHLBI’s Vascular Interventions/Innovations and Therapeutic Advances (VITA) program. This contract recognizes CAR’s powerful ability to increase the benefits of PAH drugs by selectively targeting the pulmonary vasculature.

The overall objective of the VITA program is to enable and accelerate the development of promising diagnostic and therapeutic modalities for vascular diseases, thrombotic disorders, and pulmonary hypertension.

VBS was awarded the contract to speed up the development of “CAR Peptide Therapeutic Adjuvant for PAH Targeted Therapy” in collaboration with the scientific principal investigator, Dr. Masanobu Komatsu of the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute at Lake Nona in Orlando, Florida.

Dr. Masanobu Komatsu commented, “I am very excited about the potential clinical utility of CAR as a therapeutic adjuvant for pulmonary hypertension. I am also very enthusiastic about our continuous collaboration with Vascular BioSciences and hope that we will together develop a novel intervention for this devastating lung disease.”

CEO of Vascular BioSciences, David Mann added, “Our collaboration to develop targeting peptides as therapeutic adjuvants has resulted in the discovery of the remarkable ability of CAR peptide to selectively amplify the effects of co-administered compounds in a targeted manner. We look forward to harnessing this ability of CAR peptide to enable targeted treatment for pulmonary hypertension patients.”

About Vascular BioSciences
Vascular BioSciences, a diversified biomedical company with operations in California and North Carolina, provides disease solutions in order to enhance and prolong human life

Vascular BioSciences makes interventional catheters to obtain endoarterial biopsies, provides molecular diagnostic services, and through its majority owned subsidiary VBS Pharmaceuticals, develops targeted therapeutics for patients with difficult‒to‒treat diseases.

More information about the CAR peptide and VBS is available at www.vascularbiosciences.com

For more information, please contact: dmann@vascularbiosciences.com