APATH Founder Rice's team is working on a cure for hepatitis C

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APATH Founder Rice's team is working on a cure for hepatitis C

APATH Founder Rice's team is working on a cure for hepatitis C

SUNY Downstate's Brooklyn Incubator provides labs for biotech research

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Joanne DeStephano works on AIDS research at

IAVI lab at SUNY Downstate Medical Center's

biotechnology Incubator

BY Heidi DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Thursday, July 1st 2010, 8:38 AM

Now, even miracles grow in Brooklyn.In a nondescript white building behind Kings County Hospital, scientists are feverishly working on an AIDS vaccine, a cure for hepatitis C, a home-kit blood test for cancer and a quicker way to spot brain damage.

The Incubator, as it is known, is part of SUNYDownstate Medical Center's efforts to help new biotech companies develop medical innovations in a city with a shortage of affordable lab space."New York, with its nine major medical centers, should be No. 1 in the country for biotech," said Prof. Eva Cramer, a vice president for biotech and scientific affairs at SUNY Downstate. "We are now catching up."

Cramer is the driving force behind the Incubator and its major expansion to the Brooklyn Army Terminal, known as the BioBAT.Here are some of the tenants in the three-story Incubator at 760 Parkside Ave. and what these scientific wunderkinds are doing:

BIO-SIGNAL GROUPNeuroscientist André Fenton and his team of engineers have developed a hand-held EEG (electroencephalogram) machine that looks like something from a sci-fi movie.Using a nylon cap with electrodes that goes over the head, Fenton hopes to revolutionizeemergencyroomcare. As EKGs — or electrocardiograms — areused for a fast, first check on whether a patient has a heart problem, this portable EEG would give the same fast read for people who come to the ER with traumatic brain injury or an altered mental state from stroke or seizures.

"My dream is that there areEEGkits everywhere, including battlefields," hesaid.APATH Founder Rice's team is working on a cure for hepatitis C, which affects some 5 million people in the U.S. It's spread by IV drug use or tainted blood transfusions.Current treatment is interferon and ribavirin, which can cause such flu-like symptoms as nausea, fatigue, anemia and depression. The long-term goal: to create a cocktail of specific anti-viral therapies that don't have side effects—and boost cure rates."It's a very exciting time in the field," Rice said. "A number of these virus inhibitors are in trials andshowinggoodresults.

"IAVI International AIDS Vaccine Initiative is collaborating with scientists around the world in the hunt for an AIDS vaccine. They have discovered two new powerful antibodies that can block infection from many HIV strains.

The discovery, led by investigators Sanjay Phogat at IAVI in Brooklyn andProf. Dennis Burton at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, has been heralded as a giant step forward."These two antibodies — PG9 and PG16 — are important tools in eventually creating a vaccine," said Kaminsky, one of the first IAVI vaccine researchers to start at the

Incubator in 2006.

The nonprofit foundation also has leased another 36,000 square feet of space at theBioBATin

Sunset Park."There isn't a simple answer" to coming upwith anAIDSshot, Phogat said. "Butwe know a lot about HIV . . . I'm sure we will be able to defeat it."

BioCANGENThis company's mission is to develop technologies for early cancer detection.Researcher Leesaid its test kit is in clinical trials in China and has had an 87% cancer prediction rate. The companyneeds a 95% accuracy rate before it can apply to the FDA.If it's approved, one day a person will be able to put a drop of blood on a piece of litmus-type paper at home and learn whether they have cancer. Early detection could lead to higher cure rates.hevans@...

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