Cary-based Trana Discovery is parlaying a $250,000 Small Business Research Loan from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center into commercialization of its proprietary technology for quickly identifying new drugs to fight staph infection.
Trana, a spin-out from North Carolina State University, is developing a new high-throughput screening (HTS) assay to identify compounds capable of inhibiting a reproduction vulnerability of Staphylococcus aureus (staph) bacteria.
One strain of staph, known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is becoming a major public health concern. That form of the bacterium has become resistant to most antibiotics -- a deadly threat to some vulnerable people. Researchers at Trana and elsewhere are looking for new classes of antibiotics to overcome ongoing resistance issues that make these infections so difficult to treat.
Trana plans to work with several other North Carolina-based biotechnology resources to advance the assay and streamline the discovery, development, and market availability of critically needed new anti-infectives to fight staph infections.