Ocean Biomedical Announces Patent Allowance for Malaria Antibodies That Have Potential Capability to Protect Against Infection & Treat Severe Disease

Ocean Biomedical recently announced that Scientific Co-founder Dr. Jonathan Kurtis, MD, PhD, has been granted a new patent for his malaria therapeutic antibody discoveries, targeted to both prevent malaria infection and treat severe malaria. Kurtis’ novel approach can cause parasite death at a key stage in the malarial cycle, triggering programmed cell death through apoptosis. This expands patent protection for Dr. Kurtis’ novel discoveries at a time when the most common strains of malaria are showing signs of growing resistance to current Artemisinin-based drugs. This patent is adding to Ocean Biomedical’s global patent portfolio for discoveries with potential to impact major unmet medical needs in infectious disease, oncology, and fibrosis. Dr. Jonathan Kurtis conducting research near Kisumu, Kenya, one of the world’s most malaria-infected regions.

Ocean’s breakthrough approach to malaria prevention and treatment targets the blood-stage portion of the malaria lifecycle – the stage responsible for all clinical disease and death – and therefore has the potential of significantly greater efficacy compared with vaccines and therapeutics targeting other stages. Ocean is working to optimize the formulation of its vaccine and therapeutic antibody prior to IND submission and first-in-humans testing.

Malaria is the greatest single-agent killer of children on the planet, killing approximately 627,000 individuals in 2022. Artemisinin-based drug therapy remains the mainstay of treatment, but the spread of parasites resistant to this family of compounds threatens recent progress achieved by antimalarial campaigns and underscores the urgent need to identify new anti-malarial drugs.

“At each step in the process we are learning more about how this “kill switch” mechanism works to interrupt the malaria parasite’s lifecycle, and how we can exploit that on the prevention side and the treatment side,” said Dr. Jake Kurtis, Scientific Co-founder of Ocean Biomedical, member of Ocean Biomedical’s board of directors and Chair of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University.

“The progress we have been able to make thus far in advancing novel targets is a testament to Ocean Biomedical’s innovative model and deep partnership with premier research institutions. We are hopeful that Dr. Kurtis’ discoveries will lead to powerful new prevention and treatment options that can save tens of thousands of lives, and we are proud to be leading in this important work,” said Elizabeth Ng, Chief Executive Officer of Ocean Biomedical.

“The resurgence of Falciparum malaria worldwide is increasingly alarming and we are pleased to see Dr. Kurtis’ work receive this patent coverage for such an important discovery. We will work hard to accelerate the development of our novel vaccine candidate and this novel class of antimalarial antibodies with the goal to get a new treatment option for severe malaria available as soon as possible,” said Dr. Chirinjeev Kathuria, Co-founder and Executive Chairman.

Ocean Biomedical, Inc. is a Providence, Rhode Island-based biopharma company with an innovative business model that accelerates the development and commercialization of scientifically compelling assets from research universities and medical centers. Ocean Biomedical intends to deploy the funding and expertise to move new therapeutic candidates efficiently from the laboratory to the clinic, to the world. Ocean Biomedical is currently seeking to develop five promising discoveries that have the potential to achieve life-changing outcomes in lung cancer, brain cancer, pulmonary fibrosis, and the prevention and treatment of malaria. The Ocean Biomedical team is working on solving some of the world’s toughest problems, for the people who need it most. For more information, visit www.oceanbiomedical.com.