Firm licenses UCD diagnostics for autism

Article Created: 7/28/2006 09:56 AM

Firm licenses UCD diagnostics for autism

Daily Democrat

SACRAMENTO - Pediatric Bioscience Thursday announced the hiring of Dr. Thomas R. Anderson as the founding CEO and the licensing of three technologies from UC Davis.

Pediatric Bioscience was formed by a group of researchers, parents and experienced business leaders with the goal of bringing to market diagnostics and therapeutics to diagnose and eventually treat children with autism.

"Great advances in medicine are brought to market by a combination of public research and private enterprise," said Dr. Anderson. "By building on the work done by the research team at the UCD M.I.N.D. Institute, we can have a direct positive impact on children with autism and their families by bringing to market reliable diagnostic tests for autism."

Pediatric Bioscience has licensed three promising discoveries of the UCD M.I.N.D. Institute, a multidisciplinary research center striving to find causes, improved treatments and ultimately cures for neurodevelopmental disorders.

The licensed technologies include: A prenatal assessment of increased risk of delivering a child with autism by detecting certain auto-antibodies in the blood of the prospective mothers, and a method for detecting autism biochemically, rather than by observed behavior, allowing for much earlier identification of children with autism.

"The M.I.N.D. Institute was founded on the promise to parents to take the quickest path possible to finding answers to autism," said Dr. Robert Hendren, executive director of the UCD M.I.N.D. Institute. "We are coming closer every day to fulfilling that promise with new discoveries on the biological markers of autism. We're thrilled that our research outcomes will be developed further and will eventually be available to the broader community of scientists and clinicians."

Dr. Thomas R. Anderson is an experienced executive with successful tenures at several early stage bio-pharmaceutical companies.

He founded Berkeley Antibody Company and was instrumental in the growth of the company through its successful sale to Covance. He most recently served as the CEO of Lipomics Technologies of West Sacramento, a leading metabolomics company with capabilities in quantifying lipid metabolites and interpreting their biological significance.

Pediatric Bioscience LLC was formed in 2006 by a group of researchers, parents and experienced business leaders with the goal of bringing to market diagnostics and therapeutics to diagnose and eventually treat children with autism. The company is based in Sacramento.