Dollars for Profs
Dig Into University Researchers' Outside Income and Conflicts of Interest
Published Dec. 6, 2019
This database was last updated in December 2019 and should only be used as a historical snapshot. There may be new or amended records not reflected here.
Conflict of Interest
Institutions must file significant disclosures to the National Institutes of Health if they determine financial relationships could affect the design, conduct or reporting of the NIH-funded research. The NIH provided us with their entire financial conflict of interest database, with filings from 2012 through 2019.
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Leah Cowen
University of Toronto, Department: Na
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Bright Angel Therapeutics
Equity Interest - Publicly traded entity (e.g., stock, stock option, or other ownership interest)
1. Leah Cowen & L. Whitesell (Senior Research Associate in the Cowen lab) recently co-founder of Bright Angel Therapeutics, which is a platform company focused on development of novel antifungal therapeutics. The company currently has no value (founders shares worth (b)(4)). Its lead
program is focused on development of fungal-selective inhibitors of the molecular chaperone Hsp90.
2. A methods patent for targeting Hsp90 in treatment of fungal infections has been filed by the [US] Whitehead Institute and licensed to Bright Angel. L. Cowen is a co-inventor on the patent;
3. Leah Cowen is the lead Pl on a multi-PI NIH R01 grant focused on the structure-guided design of fungal selective Hsp90 inhibitors.
4. The Bright Angel and academic research programs have a common goal but are using different approaches and different chemical matter.
5. Bright Angel has a sponsored research agreement with the University of Toronto for key assays to be performed in the Cowen lab: validation of compound engagement with target and assessment of compound activity against cells.
Targeting Hsp90 in cryptococcal fungal pathogenesis
Invasive infections by the fungus Cryptococcus pose a grave threat to human health, with a global disease burden of over one million cases and more than 600,000 deaths annually. Successful completion of this project will deliver chemical compounds for studying a critical molecular mechanism that supports fungal virulence and the development of drug-resistance in animals. Such compounds will impact clinical care by serving as promising leads for the future development of new, more effective antifungal drugs that operate in a completely unexploited target space.
Filed on May 03, 2018.
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Notes: When a more specific filing date is not available for an individual financial disclosure or conflict of interest form, we use the year the form was filed. If the year was not disclosed, we report the range of years covered by our public records requests. In a few cases, a start date was provided instead of a filing date. In those cases, we use the start date instead.
Fewer than 10% of records from the University of Florida and fewer than 1% of records from the University of Texas system were removed because they did not contain enough information.
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