South Carolina Connects with Israel & Poland

Two South Carolina companies were on the program recently at the BioForum 2014, an annual biotechnology meeting in Lodz, Poland, with scientists coming primarily from Central and Eastern Europe. Representatives from China and Russia were also in attendance. Representing South Carolina were Emerson Smith, Metromark Market Research, Inc. of Columbia and Brad Goodwin, CharlestonPharma, LLC of Charleston. They were on the program with the 2009 Nobel Laureate in chemistry, Ada Yonath, representing the Weizmann Institute of Science of Rehovat, Israel.

CharlestonPharma studies possible therapies and diagnostic tests for cancer. In cooperation with the Medical University of South Carolina, CharlestonPharma is in preclinical studies of a protein to combat cancer cells as well as a method to diagnose and provide a prognosis of cancer. This includes the detection of nucleolin on the tumor cell tissue surface. Nucleolin is a protein found within a healthy cell, but can appear on the surface as a marker of cancerous cells.

One of the biggest problems with cancer treatment is that the treatment often kills cancerous cells as well as normal, healthy cells. Chemotherapy and radiation kill good and bad cells. CharlestonPharma’s process under study only kills cancerous cells, those with nucleolin on the cell surface.

Nucleolin is also involved with ribosomes, one of the subjects of Yonath’s research. She focuses on the mechanisms underlying how simple proteins become complex proteins. Yonath helps explain, graphically and visually, through crystallography, how ribosomes produce complex proteins.

Globulin, found in blood, is an example of a simple protein. Proteins are made from amino acids. A complex protein is a simple protein with at least one molecule from another substance. Hemoglobin is an example of a complex protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen.

This science gets complicated quickly, which is why we need people like Yonath to help us understand how all this works within our bodies and why we need people like Goodwin to create companies that bring scientific discoveries out of the lab into hospitals and physician practices.

Metromark Market Research helps biotech companies like CharlestonPharma together with other companies, universities, and other resources to successfully commercialize a product in the marketplace. Other resources in South Carolina include SCRA and SC Launch, state government organizations that help entrepreneurs learn how to run a business, get funding, and get attention from potential buyers.

The link between South Carolina and Israel at the BioForum meetings in Poland is not the first interaction between South Carolina and Israel. Just over a year ago, the State of South Carolina and the state of Israel signed an agreement, managed by SCRA, to collaborate on research involving South Carolina entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in Israel.

“One of my objectives,” says Smith, “is to bring Poland into an agreement with South Carolina and Israel to cooperate with entrepreneurs in biotechnology.” Yonath was born in Jerusalem on June 22, 1939 of Polish parents who left Poland in 1933, prior to Germany’s entry into Poland on September 1, 1939. “There are connections,” Smith continues, “between South Carolina and Israel and between Israel and Poland that we want to strengthen for science, for entrepreneurs, for the commercialization of scientific discoveries, and to improve medicine and health.”