Big Apple ripe for picking

IRL research scientist Dr Shivali Gulab is spending the next two years at New York's Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

IRL research scientist Dr Shivali Gulab will spend two years on site at Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Einstein) of Yeshiva University in New York City, working closely with world-renowned biochemist Professor Vern Schramm and his team.

The results of the collaboration between IRL's Carbohydrate Chemistry group and Professor Schramm’s team, which began in 1994, to date include a number of potent enzyme inhibitors that have now progressed to late stage human trials under license to a US company.

The first compound targets T-cell mediated cancers, and results of pivotal Phase 2b human clinical trials are due out at the end of this year. The second compound has shown exciting results in patients with gout, a painful disorder affecting millions of people around the world. Other highlights from the collaborations between IRL and Einstein include drug candidates for malaria and for a range of major cancers that are currently in preclinical testing.

Einstein is one of the largest medical schools in the US, with the National Institutes of Health providing more than US$155 million in funding to its faculty members in 2009, in addition to funding major research centres in diabetes, cancer, liver disease and AIDS.

Dr Gulab will have some big opportunities to raise the profile of IRL through her work at Einstein. In Professor Schramm’s laboratories she will continue her cutting-edge carbohydrate chemistry, synthesising potential inhibitors for enzymes involved in a range of illnesses. “At the moment I’m working on inhibitors for the enzyme nicotinamide phosphoribosyltransferase (NAMPT), a promising anticancer target,” she says.

Her presence in New York is expected to facilitate planning of biochemical and biological testing at Einstein of a raft of new compounds synthesised at IRL and targeted at diseases ranging from cancer to autoimmune diseases. She will also forge increased connections with other world-leading groups at Einstein involved in microbiology, immunology and genetics.

Dr Gulab is skilled at communicating science to potential clients, so once her laboratory projects are well under way, she will work with IRL’s US-based account manager Richard Lauricella to connect to a broader commercial audience interested in IRL's services.