Rao's Discovery Wins National Competition
Posted on May 12th, 2006

Praised by the New York Times, Jasti Rao’s cancer research, UIC graduate student and SanoGene Therapeutics create a winning combination in California business competition.

In March, graduate students from twenty different elite business school teams spanning the globe joined at the University of San Francisco for the 2006 International Business Plan Competition.

The concept: to convince a group of prominent, Silicon Valley venture capitalists that an entrepreneurial idea is the foundation of an outstanding business plan – and worthy of million sin venture funding.

Taking home the $10,000 cash prize was a group of graduate students from the University of Illinois at Chicago, who convinced the financiers that their experimental cure for brain caner was worth that a risk. The students’ plan teams them with SanoGene Therapeutics, the winning company that is charged with launching human drug trials before releasing a cure commercially in the next 10 to 15 years.

According to the New York Times article released in March 27, “SanoGene draws on a discovery by University of Illinois researcher Jasti Rao regarding a new technology called ribonucleic acid interference (RNAi), which blocks gene expression (the process by which a gene’s DNA sequence is converted into the structures of a cell) by preventing the formation of proteins.

RNAi is so new only three companies are experimenting with drugs based on it, but none are targeting cancer. Unlike other drugs on the market, SanoGene’s experimental drug targets multiple cell origins of brain tumors blocking the invasion of cells into other tissue. So far, it has shown extremely positive results for the drug in animal models, according to its founders.”