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If at all possible I would like to move to Brisbane. I'm not sure if anyone can help but I would love to work together with start a company to screen for new drugs using a Drosophila model system.
Atherothrombosis is a systemic, diffuse disease associated with a high risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. It is the main cause of death in Western populations, a major public health concern and its prevalence will further increase in the future. My lab focuses on the cellular immune response in Drosophila against a parasitoid wasp. When the wasp lays an egg inside a Drosophila larva, the larva's cellular immune response reacts by encapsulating the egg. We have evidence that the Drosophila anti-parasitoid immune response mimics thrombosis, we can even block the immune response by feeding the fly larvae aspirin (a known inhibitor of thrombus formation, but very bad for the stomach). I have also shown that with relatively little cost and effort a small-molecule screen can be performed in 384-well plates (though it is much easier in 96-well plates) to look for inhibitors of this encapsulation response, and thus hopefully new drugs to inhibit atherothrombosis. I also have a leukemia-model to screen against.
I am an academic, not a businessman, I need someone who can help me start the company. Usually this is done by a university who then becomes a business partner. Since this work was originally done in Sweden I own the intellectual rights and I would like to start the company in Brisbane.
There are people doing this on a small scale, there is at least one success story of someone doing a screen in Drosophila and they have a drug in phase III trials.
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