An alumni of JLab South San Francisco, the work of Quadriga BioSciences, Inc. is anchored in the finding that many aggressive forms of cancer cells over-express certain unique amino acid transporters on their cell surfaces for the intake of nutrients to support rapid tumor growth and proliferation. By exploiting this biological determination, the firm is developing proprietary targeted cancer therapies: novel targeted molecules against cancer cells that over-express these transporters. Principals of the firm note that cancer cells have evolved to reject traditional chemotherapeutics by pumping them back out of the cancer cells. The objective of the firm is therefore to identify small molecules that cancer cells will identify as amino acids that - being important to cell survival - will not be expelled.
