Hypha Discovery Ltd
Hypha is an industrial natural products drug discovery
company (SME) focused on the discovery of bioactive
molecules from fermentations of mushroom
fungi (basidiomycetes).
Hypha's activities cover fermentation of basidiomycete fungi in liquid culture and the respective extraction/processing of fermentations into the MycoDiverseTM library of extracts and fractions (currently 11,000 samples). This library serves as a key drug discovery resource. HD uses cell-based assays to identify novel antibiotics targeted against human pathogenic bacteria and fungi and new anti-cancer compounds with cytotoxic/antiproliferative activity against human tumour cell lines. This includes the bioassay-guided purification, structure elucidation and characterization of anti-cancer compounds (including cell-cycle arrest, apoptosis/necrosis, healthy cell comparator assays with white blood cells).
Hypha has discovered recently 45 bioactive compounds, over half of which are novel. Five compounds are at the hit-to-lead evaluation stage. One anti-cancer series has developed into a fully synthetic lead optimization programme, with much improved potency, solubility and bioavailability. If in vivo efficacy evaluation is successful, the company will seek to out-license this programme in 2010. Hypha's fit with the Marine Fungi project includes cell-based primary screening and secondary evaluation for anti-cancer fungal metabolite drug discovery, laboratory scale purification of bioactive extracts, structural identification of bioactive compounds and compound evaluation for progression to proof-of-concept in vivo studies.
PI contact: Dr. Liam Evans liam.evans (@)hyphadiscovery.co.uk