Funded short-term projects will address industry feedback on innovative technologies

Researchers in Purdue University’s colleges of Agriculture and Science have received an additional $95,000 from the Trask Innovation Fund to develop patent-pending drought-resistant soybean plants and novel arthritis treatments.

The fund is managed by the Purdue Innovates Incubator, which provides programming for the Purdue University community to ideate, refine and support their solutions. Funding recipients can receive up to $50,000 for their initial project; they may reapply a maximum of three times to receive up to an aggregate cap of $100,000 to support the same technology.

Matt Dressler, Incubator’s fund manager, said the goal of this funding round is to enable companies to make a confident assessment in the work.

“The teams developing the arthritis and soybean innovations secured $75,000 in an initial round of funding and completed their project’s deliverables,” he said. “Although industry expressed interest in the work, both are still early in the development phase. The feedback, however, has directed the researchers to further de-risk their technology, which is the purpose of this funding.”

The two spring 2024 recipients of the second round of Trask Innovation Fund awards, their projects and award amounts are:

Herman Sintim; College of Science, Purdue Institute for Cancer Research and Purdue Institute for Drug Discovery; “New Agents for Potential Treatment of Arthritis”; $50,000

Sintim said arthritis is a debilitating disease that affects millions of people globally.

“Current medications for arthritis include expensive biologics and small-molecule drugs, typically anti-inflammatory drugs, which are not effective for a large proportion of arthritis patients,” he said.

Sintim leads a team developing novel, patent-pending compounds that potentially inhibit TAK1, a protein kinase shown to play key roles in arthritis, especially rheumatoid arthritis.

“A few small molecules that inhibit TAK1 have been developed, but the majority inhibit many other kinases and/or do not have good oral bioavailability,” he said. “So far, no TAK1 inhibitor has entered clinical trials for arthritis.”

Sintim said the second round of Trask funding will be used to collect data that shows the compounds’ readiness for clinical translation.

“While we have demonstrated the compounds are orally bioavailable and potent TAK1 inhibitors in mice, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires more experiments to be conducted before a molecule can be dosed in humans,” Sintim said. “This round of Trask funding would help obtain industry standard data, such as toxicology and pharmacokinetics data in additional animal studies.”

Sintim is the Distinguished Professor in Chemistry in the James Tarpo Jr. and Margaret Tarpo Department of Chemistry. He received $50,000 to advance the compounds in the fall 2023 round of funding.

Gyeong Mee Yoon; College of Agriculture; “Constitutive Nuclear Targeting of CTR1 (CNTC) as a Genetic Tool To Confer Drought-Tolerant Trait to Soybeans”; $45,335

Yoon said the United Nations reported that global drought could impact more than 75% of the world’s population by 2050.

“The average costs associated with droughts and heat waves have been estimated at $6.4 billion annually, and 47.33% of the contiguous United States is currently under the influence of drought conditions,” she said.

Yoon leads a team conducting research on resilient agriculture adapted to the changing climate. Their patent-pending research has identified that elevating the levels of a protein called CTR1 within a cell’s nucleus significantly enhances a plant’s drought tolerance. CTR1 is a key regulator of the plant hormone ethylene, which plays a vital role in plant stress responses.

“Manipulating the location and concentration of CTR1 in the nucleus paves the way for developing transgenic plants that can better withstand water-deficit conditions,” she said. “This offers a potential strategy to safeguard crops against the escalating challenges posed by climate change.”

Yoon and her colleagues used the first round of Trask funding to successfully generate initial transgenic soybean lines that incorporate their technology.

“This second round of funding will support work to further select and develop soybean transgenic cultivars and conduct comprehensive testing in controlled environments and field settings to evaluate their performance under real-world agronomic conditions,” she said. “This is critical for translating our technology into viable agricultural products that can contribute to global food security in an era of unprecedented climate change.”

Yoon is an associate professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology. She received $25,000 in the fall 2022 round of funding.