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Aursos (pronounced R-sos) was founded in March of 2007. The Company has licensed technology developed at Michigan Technological University (Houghton, MI) in the laboratory of Dr. Seth Donahue on the family of naturally-occurring Parathyroid Hormone (PTH) proteins found in the black bear (Ursus americanus). The therapeutic mission of the company is to develop black bear PTH (BB-PTH) 1-34 for the prevention and treatment of osteoporosis.The Company may also seek orphan drug status for BB-PTH 1-34 for patients who are suffering from disuse osteoporosis due to chronic immobilization, which is currently not indicated for Forteo^® (rhuman PTH 1-34). Alternatively, the Company will evaluate the potential for development of other constructs of BB-PTH for the same types of indications (i.e., prevention and treatment of osteoporosis and disuse chronic immobilization).

Osteoporosis is currently a health issue for approximately 44 million Americans (10 million with osteoporosis, 34 million with low bone mass and at risk for the condition). These numbers are expected to rise to 62 million Americans (14 and 48 million, respectively), by 2020. Accordingly, additional therapies that prevent and/or treat osteoporosis have the potential to penetrate this multi-billion dollar market.

Black bears (Ursus americanus) provide a unique model for the effects of disuse on bone. Bears experience annual periods of disuse (hibernation) and remobilization that are approximately equal in length, which would compromise bone strength via annual net bone loss in other animals. However, bears do not lose cortical bone mineral, structural or mechanical properties with age and both trabecular and cortical bone are preserved during hibernation. Bears also maintain constant serum calcium levels though they do not eat, drink, urinate, or defecate during hibernation, and maintain balanced bone remodeling throughout active and disuse periods. Thus, bears appear to prevent bone loss during disuse, likely by a biological mechanism that maintains balanced bone remodeling.

An in-vitro study was designed to determine the effects of human PTH 1-34 versus BB-PTH 1-34 on gene expression related osteoblast apoptosis (bone cell death). BB-PTH 1-34 promoted statistically significantly (p = 0.047) greater anti-apoptotic gene expression than human PTH 1-34. This study suggests that bears’ unique ability to maintain balanced bone remodeling during disuse may be due, in part, to the prevention of osteoblast apoptosis.

A proof-of-concept test with synthetic BB-PTH compared to synthetic human PTH was conducted. Thirty 70-day-old male Sprague Dawley rats (n=10/group) were treated with 1) vehicle, 2) synthetic human PTH 1-34, or 3) synthetic BB-PTH 1-34. One femur from each rat was subjected to a 3-point bending test to assess femoral cortical bone strength. These data demonstrate that BB-PTH 1-34 and human PTH 1-34 both increased femoral cortical bone strength in a similar and significant degree compared to vehicle alone.

A Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) patent application PCT/US2006/060844 and a United States national application 11/559,285 were filed on 13 November 2006 and published on 24 May 2007 as WO 2007/059470 and on September 20, 2007 as US-2007-0219132-A1 respectively (Title: Black Bear Parathyroid Hormone and Methods of Using Black Bear Parathyroid Hormone).