Research at MSU on potential cancer therapy becomes new company, Rasiris, with seed funding from Pacific Horizon Ventures

A chance discovery by a group of Montana State University scientists is the core of a new Bozeman business aimed at detecting cancers and treating them without surgery or chemotherapy.

The company, Rasiris, Inc., was incorporated this week by MSU research chemist Charles Spangler with funding from a Seattle venture capital firm.

"If the process works, it will revolutionize the treatment of cancerous tumors," Spangler said recently while taking a break from company business.

The investment, called seed stage, from Pacific Horizon Ventures http://www.pacifichorizon.com/ means Rasiris can start a series of experiments that will test whether the new technology will do what its inventors think it will.

The technique, called photodynamic therapy, uses special compounds that when ingested migrate to tumors inside the body. The compounds kill cancer cells when activated by a beam of laser light outside the body.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved only a few compounds for photodynamic treatment of some skin disorders and a type of eye disease. But the method doesn’t work against tumors more than a few millimeters underneath the skin. That’s because the current tumor-seeking compounds can’t absorb wavelengths long enough to penetrate deep inside the body, where most tumors are found.

But that may change, owing to a physicist’s hunch and some clever chemistry at MSU. Aware of the limited ability of some chemical compounds to absorb light, physics professor Aleksander Rebane suggested Spangler try his hand at synthesizing some better ones. Spangler and former graduate student Eric Nickel took a stab at it, and their first compound worked. That lucky strike opened up the possibility of using longer wavelengths in photodynamic therapy to non-invasively treat solid tumors and to diagnose them, too.

"Our breakthrough was to discover compounds that have longer wavelength absorption," Spangler said.

The inventors–Spangler, Rebane and Nickel–sought patents through the university and started a company called MPA Technologies, Inc. in a local business incubator.

Now the investment from Pacific Horizon Ventures and the formation of the spin-off company Rasiris means the scientists can focus more heavily on the cancer applications, specifically the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. Work on other uses for the new compounds will continue through the parent company.

"The development of a non-invasive targeted treatment for breast cancer and other tumors that have previously been unreachable for light-based therapies holds tremendous promise," said Jean-Pierre Laurent of Pacific Horizon Ventures. "We are pleased to welcome Rasiris to our validation portfolio."

Rasiris scientists have several milestones to reach in the next 18 to 24 months, said Spangler.

They must prove that the chemical compounds are non-toxic and that they go only to the tumor site and not to nearby healthy tissue. The compounds have to accumulate in the tumor rapidly and then leave the body quickly, too. And the research must show that a laser can activate the compounds’ tumor-killing properties deep inside the body.

If all goes well, the project would move on to animals studies, human clinical trials and final FDA approval–a process that could last 7 to 11 years, Spangler said.

For now, Rasiris has four employees with four or five more ready to come on board. In two years it may reach 10 to 15 employees, said Spangler. It’s located at TechRanch in the Advanced Technology Park near campus.

Contacts: Charles Spangler, (406) 994-3932, [email protected]; Aleksander Rebane, (406) 994-7831; [email protected]; Becky Mahurin, (406) 994-2752; [email protected]; Bruce Jackson, Pacific Horizon Ventures, (206) 682-1811; [email protected]

http://www.montana.edu/commserv/csnews/nwview.php?article=939