May 24, 2010 (FinancialWire) — Sorrento Therapeutics, Inc. (OTCBB: SRNE) said that it has received an Advanced Technology Small Business Technology Transfer Research grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The Phase I grant is for $300,000 annually for two years, with the possibility of Phase II funding of $1 million per year for up to three years.

The peer-reviewed grant was awarded to support Sorrento’s program to generate and develop novel antibody therapeutics and vaccines to combat Staphylococcus aureus infections, including methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA), by disrupting quorum sensing, a bacterial communication process essential to virulence.

For 2005, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that 94,000 serious invasive MRSA infections occurred in the U.S. and more than 19,000 Americans died from these infections.

Sorrento Therapeutics has obtained an exclusive, worldwide license from The Scripps Research Institute to use a novel quorum sensing technology to identify fully human antibodies for the neutralization of Staph-specific signaling peptides that control bacterial virulence.

A research group at the institute has shown that sequestering these signaling peptides, which are integral components of a bacterial communication process called quorum sensing, results in significantly reduced virulence of MRSA in both cellular and animal models.

The company said it believes the Staph signaling peptide analogs described by TSRI represent a unique opportunity to develop both vaccines and antibody-based immunotherapeutics to combat MRSA.

California-based Sorrento Therapeutics is a development-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on applying its proprietary technology platform for the discovery and development of human therapeutic antibodies for the treatment of a variety of disease conditions, including cancer, inflammation, metabolic disease and infectious disease.

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