Take some old drugs in the, a new disease and a handful of scientists and you get ResurRx Pharmaceuticals, a drug repurposing database that could ultimately house all the drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration and currently on the market.
As a team of five, Hopkins postgrads and graduates Curtis Chong, Fatemah Mamdani, Tilman Schneider-Poetsch and sophomore Joynita Sur took home the first prize of $10,000 from the Greater Baltimore Technology Council's "MoshPit" business plan competition with their proposal for ResurRx.
"Basically ResurRx was a play on the word resurrect," Sur said.
As a Ph.D. at the Medical School, Chong's thesis was about the creation of a library of FDA approved drugs that would allow scientists to search through old drugs to help in tackling new diseases that arise. The usefulness of this system is that it signficantly shortens the time required for the drug to receive approval. Typically, a new drug to be released into the market could take more than 15 years before it would receive a new use patent. However, with the repositioning of old drugs, it will only need to go through two or three years before it receives final approval. This would largely increase the potential for finding disease treatments in a much more timely fashion.
A good example is Viagra. The drug was originally created to lower blood pressure but was later found to have a new use in the market.
"ResurRx offers a low cost way to screen all existing drugs," Sur said.
Mamdani and Schneider-Poetsch had worked in Chong's lab for two to three years, and Sur joined the team in order to help them present their idea to the real business world.
"It was a very interesting experience because we all come from very different backgrounds," Sur said.
Being five to six years younger than the rest of the team, Sur found it much easier to fit in the group than she originally anticipated. While the rest of the team had the scientific understanding for the project, she was able to coach them on writing the business plan and translating technical terms to layman's terms.
"I learnt a lot about working with others," Sur said.
Having assisted the team this year in the competition, Sur plans to submit her own idea next year.
