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Vallejo Times-Herald: Thompson announces $1.5 million federal grant to Vallejo firm

October 13, 2015
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Vallejo Times-Herald Staff Reports

A Vallejo-based business is getting more than $1 million in defense department grant funds to study ways to fight infections, Rep. Mike Thompson announced Friday.

Thompson (D- St. Helena) announced a $1.5 million Defense Department grant for Mare-Island’s Riptide Bioscience, Inc.

The grant, part of the US Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity, will go towards a research project called the “Evaluation of Novel Antimicrobial Peptides as Topical Anti-Infectives with Broad Spectrum Activity Against Combat-Related Bacterial and Fungal Wound Infections,” Thompson’s office announced.

“For several years, Riptide has been doing cutting-edge medical research right here in Vallejo,” Thompson said. “Their research into wound-healing applications will provide great benefits to those in our military as well as the general population. Some 75 percent of recent war injuries are the result of ballistic wounds, and our Riptide is finding new and better methods to fight infections that result from those wounds. Their work will benefit our local economy, and I’m proud to support this kind of leading medical science emerging from our district.”

Riptide Executive Vice President Henry Lopez, said, “The research funded by this grant has huge potential to improve outcomes for war-wounded servicemen and women, and also civilian patients suffering from everyday wounds and trauma.”

The grant was one of only five funded in “a tremendously competitive process” involving some 280 applications from top research institutions across the nation, Lopez said.

“So we see it as powerful affirmation for the peptide-based therapeutics Riptide is developing,” he said.

L. Edward Clemens, principal investigator on the Defense Department project, said, “As exciting as it is to improve the medical science behind wound healing, the work done here may have even wider application. One of the biggest challenges in our health system is the growing resistance of bacteria to conventional antibiotics. As those drugs are more widely used, bacteria mutate around the metabolic pathways the drugs use to kill germs. This is a crisis in the making. Some estimates suggest that in just a few years, antimicrobial resistance will lead to more deaths than cancer and diabetes combined.”

But, Riptide’s agents don’t work through the usual pathways, Clemens said.

“They kill bacteria in ways much harder to mutate around,” he said. “We expect these drugs to be a big part of the medical armament against the germs of the future.”

Riptide Bioscience’s research involves the development of Designed Host Defense Peptides – small molecular weight proteins that fight against bacteria, viruses, and fungi, he said.

Thompson represents California’s 5th Congressional District, which includes all or part of Solano, Napa, Contra Costa, Lake and Sonoma Counties.

Issues:Health Care