Bionomics files patent on 114 novel angiogenesis genes

Adelaide gene-discovery company Bionomics (ASX:BNO) has announced it has successfully filed a patent under the international Patent Cooperation Treaty on 114 novel genes involved in angiogenesis, the process of blood-vessel growth.

CEO Dr Deborah Rathjen described the filing as a milestone, which confirmed Bionomics as a world leader in gene discovery and validating potential therapeutic targets.

"Patents are one of the key performance indicators for a company like Bionomics, and we have a very rapid and robust platform for discovering new genes, and identifying their function," she said.

Angiogenesis has been a biomedical research hot spot during the past decade. Rapid blood vessel growth is essential to the growth of all cancers that form solid tumours, and experiments with laboratory animals have shown that switching off blood-vessel growth to starve fast-growing cancerous cells of oxygen and nutrients, can cause tumours to regress or even disappear completely.

Angiogenesis also has a major role in inflammatory disorders like rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease (inflammatory bowel disease), and eye diseases like macular degeneration and overgrowth of the retina in diabetes.

Macular degeneration, the common eye disease in aging people, can eventually cause blindness -- it results from the atrophy of blood vessels that supply essential oxygen to the retina, the light-sensing membrane at the back of the eye. Therapies that could preserve or renew these blood vessels may preserve the sight of patients.

The reverse problem -- blood vessel overgrowth of the retina -- is a common complication of chronic diabetes, and therapies that could inhibit or prevent angiogenesis could also save eyesight.

In a statement, Bionomics said industry estimates suggested that the potential market for angiogenesis-based therapies for all these diseases and disorders could eventually account for some 20 per cent of the $US320 billion a year pharmaceutical market.

Patents are the lifeblood of the biotechnology business, and Bionomics' tally of 114 patentable genes since it began searching 16 months ago is an haul -- Rathjen said US giant Genentech had a strong angiogenesis gene-discovery program, but all of Bionomics' genes were different from those her company had discovered.

She said research has already begun into identifying what the genes did, how their activity was coordinated, and which ones may be the most promising targets for new therapeutic drugs.

"We can bring our strong bioinformatics capacity to study the genes," said Rathjen. " We've already devised strategies for sifting through the data."

Rathjen said the company also had strong validation processes for rapidly testing its ideas as to what particular genes do in the angiogenesis process. Bionomics has an agreement with the Hansen Centre for Cancer Research to exploit its cellular model of blood vessel growth, which involves growing blood capillaries from dissociated endothelial cells that form the lining of major blood vessels.

She said Bionomics' technology made it fairly easy and quick to knock out a gene of interest, or alternatively, to up-regulate its activity, to determine its role in angiogenesis.