Symberix announced on 10/18/18  has been awarded three Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), entered into a Research Collaboration Agreement with the NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), and received a $250,000 Small Business Research Loan from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.

The three SBIR grants collectively totaling $2.9 million are awarded by the NIH’s National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, and National Institute of General Medical Sciences. The Research Collaboration Agreement with NCATS is for in-kind collaborative research activities and access to scientific expertise. The funded efforts include high-throughput screening, identification of new chemotypes and a clinical candidate, and IND-enabling studies for the clinical candidate.

"Symberix is developing first-in-class adjunctive therapies to mitigate the debilitating lower GI side effects of pain, cancer and organ-transplant medicines by selectively inhibiting β-glucuronidase enzymes in gut bacteria with small-molecule, non-antibiotic drugs,” said Ward Peterson, Ph.D., CEO of Symberix. “Our approach could be as clinically and commercially meaningful as marketed products developed for drug-induced nausea, vomiting and other upper GI side effects. We appreciate the support from the National Institutes of Health and North Carolina Biotechnology Center to enable Symberix to advance a new therapeutic paradigm based on pharmaceutical control of the microbiome.”