Auratus Bio, LLC is pursuing disease model development and therapeutic target discovery. Information is now available on gene sequences, gene expression patterns in various tissues, associations of gene variants and mutations to specific disease susceptibility, phenotypic responses to gene mutations, known or putative functions of gene products and druggability of gene products. However, the number of good drug targets for disease therapeutics is still limited and discovery of new drug targets is a costly and daunting challenge. Failure of drugs in clinical trials is unacceptably high and increasing. The efficiency of drug target discovery could be improved and clinical failure be reduced with a greater understanding of how target proteins and drugs act in complex in vivo systems. At Auratus Bio the aim is to improve drug target discovery and evaluation by applying modern genetic engineering technologies in an underutilized laboratory animal: the golden Syrian hamster. One of the principals has developed a unique and proprietary technology for transferring genetic modifying reagents into Syrian hamster zygotes to produce genetically engineered hamsters: the first ever produced. Using this technology, allowed knockout of several genes important in various disease states and is evaluating these models - demonstrating physiological responses that are substantially different from that generated by genetic mouse models but similar to that observed in humans. Therefore, these novel genetic hamster models are more reliable for understanding and modeling human disease. Auratus is now developing a fully integrated system for candidate gene modification, model production and physiological evaluation in the golden Syrian hamster to supply disease models for drug and vaccine testing and for discovery of new targets.
