Burnaby biotech works on cure for deadly poison

September 22, 2006
NewsLeader
By Michael McQuillan

A Burnaby biotech company signed a $2.2 million (Canadian) research contract with the U.S. Department of Defense to develop a antidote for ricin poisoning.

Twinstrand Therapeutics expects to develop the antidote within two years for the Department of Defense’s Threat Reduction Agency Joint Science and Technology Office for Chemical and Biological Defence.

There is currently no medical countermeasure for ricin, which has been used by terrorists and assassins. According to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, ricin was used by Bulgarian secret police in 1978 to assassinate Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov. It has also been linked with Al Qaeda.

Derived from the castor bean plant, ricin can be lethal if injected, inhaled or ingested. A lethal dose in humans of 0.2 milligrams and it is considered to be twice as deadly as cobra venom.

While much of Twinstand’s work is devoted to developing drugs to fight cancer and other diseases, there is some crossover with coming up with a ricin antidote, says company president Dr. Thor Borgford.

“These proteins we’re working on are indirectly related to ricin and ricin-like proteins. We’ve been able to take advantage of our knowledge of these proteins and some of the materials that we’ve generated and use those materials in the development of this counter-measure for ricin.

“The tools and methods that we have developed in the process of creating drugs for cancer, those tools and methods can be applied to the development of a counter-measure to ricin.”

The company employs just 20 at its Burnaby headquarters but has partnerships and contracts throughout the world. Some of the other drugs it is developing help combat hepatitis, HIV/AIDS, ovarian and lung cancers and parasitic and fungal infections. It’s cancer-fighting drug TST10088 is currently undergoing clinical trials.

“It’s important to note that the things we’re most interested in is developing drugs for treating life-threatening diseases,” said Borgford. “Cancer is at the very top of the list of things we are working on.”