Optivia Biotechnology, a Menlo Park, CA-based company studying how various drugs interact in the body, said today it has secured a $1.85 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s Small Business Innovation Research program. The grant will support research into proteins that transport drugs across cell membranes and either enable or block their effectiveness. About one-fifth of the grant, $367,000, will support research at UC San Francisco, where scientists will profile how 2,000 different drugs interact with various cellular transporters in the liver and kidneys. The study will be the largest to date of how prescription drugs interact with cell membrane transporters, according to Kathleen Giacomini, a UCSF researcher involved in the work.
