Luceome Biotechnologies an emerging, privately-held biotechnology company located in Tucson, Arizona has received a $1.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to commercialize its drug research technology.
The grant award will help Luceome develop a product called KinaseSeeker that helps speed the process of finding effective cancer drugs. Luceome enables drug discovery by leveraging its assay technology for identification of drugs against kinases.
Luceome provides unique low-cost assay solutions (KinaseSeeker™ and KinaseLite™) to clients for meeting their selectivity profiling needs as well as for the development of assays against specific targets. Luceome’s assays are based on a technology platform that utilizes luciferase fragment complementation. The resulting luminescence detection is sensitive with low background interference, allowing identification of target and off-target effects of drug candidates.
The Luceome leadership team includes:
Reena Zutshi, Ph.D.
President and CEO, Co-founder
Dr. Reena Zutshi is the President/CEO and co-founder of Luceome Biotechnologies. Most recently, she was the Vice President of Operations at ImaRx Therapeutics, Inc., a publicly-traded biopharmaceutical company developing microbubble based therapies for the treatment of occlusive vascular diseases. At ImaRx, Dr. Zutshi was responsible for the research, development, and program management functions. Dr. Zutshi holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Purdue University, where she worked on development of dimerization inhibitors of HIV-1 protease. She received post-doctoral training at Yale University, where she used phage display technology to inhibit protein-protein interactions.
Professor Indraneel Ghosh, Ph.D.
Chief Scientific Officer, Co-founder
Professor Indraneel Ghosh is Luceome’s Chief Scientific Officer and the inventor of Luceome’s assay technology. He received his Ph.D. in Chemistry at Purdue University designing new inhibitors of protein-protein interactions. Following his doctoral studies, he was a Leukemia Society post-doctoral fellow at Yale University, where he developed the widely used split-GFP reporter system for in vivo detection of protein-protein interactions. He is currently the Weed Distinguished Chair in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Arizona. He has been a receipient of the Research Innovation Award from the Research Corporation and a Career Award from the National Science Foundation.
To learn more
read the article at the Arizona Daily Star or visit www.Luceome.com