Sinopia Awarded Grant from National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research for Oral Mucositis

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sinopia Biosciences, Inc., a biotechnology company advancing novel therapeutics identified using its proprietary computational drug discovery platform, has been awarded a grant from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), a branch of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, to fund the continued evaluation of therapeutic candidates to treat oral mucositis.

Mucositis is a debilitating side effect of chemotherapy and radiotherapy that is characterized by inflammation and ulceration in mucosal tissue. Typically presented in cancer clinical care, mucositis occurs in about 40% of the patients treated with chemotherapy and increases to as high as 90% for head and neck cancer patients treated with both chemo- and radiotherapy.

“By leveraging our computational drug discovery platform, we were able to uncover novel therapeutic targets for mucositis for which there are no FDA approved treatments available, specifically for patients with solid tumors,” said Iman Famili, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Sinopia Biosciences. “When mucositis presents itself in cancer clinical care, there can be a delay in antineoplastic treatment for high-grade mucositis management that can lead to worse overall prognosis and significantly higher healthcare costs. We are pleased to receive funding from the NIDCR to progress our assessment of a promising therapeutic for mucositis into the clinic.”

To pinpoint promising therapeutic targets for mucositis, Sinopia harnessed the power of its LEarn And DiScover (LEADS™) platform, a next-generation drug discovery engine driven by machine learning and multi-omics network analysis, to gain insight into the pathophysiology of mucositis and to identify biomolecular signatures that were related to the development of severe mucositis and healing processes.

“We are encouraged by our in vivo data indicating the potential for a new therapeutic class of drugs for treating mucositis,” said Aarash Bordbar, Ph.D., Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Sinopia Biosciences. “In addition to supporting our development effort, these data further validate the utility of Sinopia’s LEADS™ platform, which has been instrumental in the expansion of our preclinical pipeline.”

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R43DE031464. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

About Sinopia Biosciences

Sinopia Biosciences, Inc. is a biotechnology company advancing novel therapeutics identified using its proprietary computational drug discovery platform. Sinopia’s discovery platform combines high-throughput omics data, machine learning, and network biology. Sinopia is headquartered at JLABS San Diego. For more information, please visit www.sinopiabio.com/.