
'Tip of the iceberg': Novartis-partnered UC Berkeley lab churns out a startup to tackle protein stabilization
For the past decade, Daniel Nomura’s lab at UC Berkeley has been working to find chemical approaches to drug the so-called “undruggable,” and with the help of Novartis’ research arm for the past five years, he has built out the foundation for a new biotech in the protein stabilization field.
Vicinitas Therapeutics joins a small field of upstarts looking to flip the switch and focus on stabilizing certain proteins, rather than degrading them. Cystic fibrosis is a good example of a disease that could benefit from small molecules aimed at stabilizing the CFTR protein, which is what Nomura’s lab did in a recent Nature Chemical Biology paper, serving as the basis for Vicinitas.
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