Healthcare
Biotechnology & Drugs
NASD: KOSN
Kosan Biosciences, Inc.
3832 Bay Center Place
Hayward, CA 94545
Daniel V. Santi, M.D., Ph.D.
Chairman and
Chief Executive Officer
Interview conducted by:
Walter Banks, Co-Publisher
CEOCFOinterviews,com
October 2001
BIO OF CEO,
Daniel V. Santi, M.D., Ph.D., is a co-founder, the Chairman of the Board and Chief
Executive Officer of Kosan. Dr. Santi was a Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics, and
of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, at the University of California, San Francisco, a position
that he held for over 25 years. He was one of the original members of the Scientific
Advisory Boards of Chiron Corporation and Mitotix, Inc., and has served as a consultant to
several large pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Santi has published over 275 scientific papers
and is inventor on many patents in combinatorial chemistry and other areas. Dr. Santi
received a Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry from the State University of New York and his M.D.
from the University of California, San Francisco.
About Kosan Biosciences,
Inc.
Kosan Biosciences is a biotechnology company using
proprietary technologies to develop drug candidates from an important class of natural
product compounds known as polyketides. Polyketides are naturally made in very small
amounts in microorganisms and are difficult to make or modify chemically. Kosan has
developed technologies to manipulate the natural process by which polyketides are made.
These technologies give Kosan the ability to create novel polyketides and a pipeline of
potential drug candidates.
Using Kosan’s proprietary technologies they are able to create, modify and produce
polyketides in ways that chemists cannot. They can make improved versions of a known
polyketide pharmaceutical product and are able to change a polyketide used in one
therapeutic area to create a new polyketide used for another. They can take the genetic
instructions for making a polyketide out of one microorganism and put them into another
microorganism that provides a more favorable environment to grow and produce more of the
polyketides.
Kosan has primary programs for the discovery and development of new polyketides that are
directed at infectious disease, cancer, gastrointestinal motility disorders and nerve
regeneration. These programs were selected because they represent opportunities where
Kosan’s technologies could improve existing products or advanced lead compounds. All
of their programs address existing or potential large markets.
Kosan has one compound, Epothilone D, which is nearing Phase I clinical trials.
Epothilones are polyketide natural products that inhibit cancer cells by the same
mechanism as paclitaxel, and also are effective against most paclitaxel-resistant tumors.
Epothilone D, also known as desoxyepothilone B, is in pre-clinical development by Kosan
Biosciences.
CEOCFOinterviews: Dr.
Santi, can you give us a brief history of Kosan Biosciences?
Dr Santi: Kosan was
founded in 1995, by me and Chaitan Khosla. At the time, I was a professor at the
University of California, San Francisco and Chaitan was a Professor at Stanford
University. Chaitan had developed a very powerful technology at Stanford that enabled the
manipulation of the genes of microorganisms that produced pharmaceutical natural products,
in order to change to structures of those natural products. We began our laboratory
operations in 1996, and it took about two years to establish the basics of the technology.
We then began applying it to potential pharmaceutical products.
CEOCFOinterviews: Is it
your goal to create your own drugs or enhance existing drugs?
To
receive a complete copy of this interview call: 570-839-0236
