Digital Sandbox KC, the proof-of-concept center started by the University of Missouri-Kansas City Innovation Center as part of its KCSourceLink program, has funded projects for 37 area technology startups including one with a UMKC faculty connection.
Gerald Wyckoff, UMKC associate professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, is chief executive officer of Zorilla Research, a computerized system that helps predict problem interactions of a drug in the early stages of development. This enables the developing company to repurpose failed compounds earlier in the process and prevent costly late-stage drug trial failures.
Currently, the failure rate for new drugs is 87 percent. That means nearly nine out of 10 chemical compounds identified as potential drugs fail at some point on the path to approval.
The current trend in the pharmaceutical industry is toward shifting risk to smaller discovery companies. Wyckoff says that is a smart choice because these companies are more tightly focused. However, market conditions have made it harder for these companies to negotiate successful deals, often even with compounds that are successful in early tests.
Zorilla Research intends to serve small to mid-size discovery companies by increasing their success rates and facilitating more efficient use of their resources. With Zorilla’s SABLE structural analysis technology, clients can predict problem interactions in early stages of development, and potentially recover compounds that have moved into later phases.
The market for computational tools in drug discovery is about $500 million a year in the U.S., and growing at about $200 million annually. Estimates for the cost of taking a drug to market range from $500 million to $1 billion per drug, with a timeline of about 15 years.
“Digital Sandbox has helped us move our product, SABLE, into a form that we can now sell commercially,” Wyckoff said. “We’re working right now to create a secure digital lobby for the software so we can start sales online. We’ve been able to work with excellent software talent because of the investment from Digital Sandbox, and this has helped turned our academic project into a business that, we hope, benefits Kansas City and the region.”