With ties to Rutgers University, Longevica Pharmaceuticals, Inc. had a biotechnology company organized around development of kinase inhibitors that keep normal cells healthy during chemotherapy or radiation treatment. The firm had been working on novel chemical inhibitors of eukaryotic elongation factor 2 kinase (eEF2K), a highly promising drug target whose inhibition can achieve multiple beneficial effects ranging from suppressing tumor growth to protecting normal cells from the cytotoxicity of chemotherapeutic agents.
