Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center will collaborate with Bristol-Meyers Squibb to take epothilone derivative iso-fludelone, KOS-1803, into clinical trials. (more)

University of Pennsylvania study gives hope for new class of Alzheimer’s disease drugs (more)

Natural molecules of Streptococcus mutans control Candida albicans infection (more)

Aquapharm Biodiscovery, a leading marine biotechnology company, announced (September 20, 2010) it has signed a research agreement with Dundee University to help it develop new drugs based on marine natural products that may help in the fight against Alzheimer’s.

Trius Therapeutics, Inc. announced (May 19, 2010) that it has been awarded a new four and a half year contract from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), an agency within the U.S. Department of Defense, for the development of novel antibiotics directed against gram-negative bacterial pathogens. Trius may receive up to $29.5 million in support of development efforts under the new DTRA contract, which is funded as part of DTRA’s Transformational Medical Technologies Initiative (TMTI). Pursuant to the contract, Trius will apply its proprietary Focused Antisense Screening Technology (FAST) discovery platform to identify the targets of antibacterial compounds from marine natural product libraries developed in the laboratory of Dr. William Fenical, Distinguished Professor of Oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. Trius will then apply its structure-based drug design and development capabilities in an effort to optimize promising antibacterial compounds for activity against gram-negative biodefense pathogens such as Yersinia pestis, Francisella tularensis and Burkholderia pseudomallei.  Read more at http://www.triusrx.com/trius-therapeutics-news-100519.php.