September 25, 2006 Source: :
http://www.sfu.ca/mediapr/news_releases/archives/news09250601.htm Fighting bio-terrorism with its own kind Contact: Thor Borgford, 604.415.7180, borgford@twinstrand.com
Carol Thorbes, PAMR, 604.291.3035, cthorbes@sfu.ca Website: www.twinstrand.com/library/000058.php September 25, 2006 An SFU spinoff company, Burnaby-based Twinstrand Therapeutics, has won a $2.2-million, two-year American contract to develop an antidote to ricin poisoning. The contract is with a United States Department of Defense agency. A highly toxic protein, derived from the widely available castor bean plant, ricin ranks high up on the world's list of feared and deadly bio-terror agents. There currently is no antidote to ricin. Intelligence reports indicate ricin was used during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and stockpiled by Al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan. Thor Borgford, an adjunct professor in the departments of chemistry and molecular biology and biochemistry at SFU, is the founder of Twinstrand. He can talk about why ricin is so deadly and how his company's work with related molecules has given them the tools to defeat ricin's deadly side. "During the past decade Twinstrand has developed unparalleled expertise with ricin-like drugs and that made us the natural choice to develop countermeasures to ricin," explains Borgford. His company has used recombinant DNA methods to engineer drugs that fight cancer, hepatitis, AIDS and parasitic infections. These drugs — distant relatives of ricin — deliver a lethal punch only to diseased cells. Twinstrand expects to have an antidote to ricin ready for emergency human use in 2008. —30—
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