Scandivir
Scandivir is a joint venture between industry and science, focused on diagnosis, treatment and prevention of virus related diseases.
Scandivir was founded in 2008 by Scandinavian Clinical Nutrition AB (SCN) and Obetech, LLC. with Karolinska Institutet (KI) as research partner. The company is based in Scandinavia, but the main part of the R&D work is conducted in USA by the Obetech lab staff at the Virginia Biotechnology Research Park, with support from the company's network of scientists at KI and Center for Molecular Medicine (CMM) in Sweden.
The company's current primary focus is the obesity virus Adenovirus-36 (Ad-36). Scientific studies have shown that Ad-36 causes fat cells to accumulate more fat, and that a significant proportion of obese people are infected by Ad-36, indicating that the virus is contributing to the global obesity epidemic. During 2008-2009, intense R&D work has been carried out, aiming to create diagnostic kits to make it possible to see if a person is infected by Ad-36. The first objective has now been reached, as an ELISA test for professional use now is being prepared for commercialization. The next step is a test kit for home use, similar to a pregnancy test, with antiviral treatments as step three in the process.
Scandivir has an extensive IP portfolio that consists both of Ad-36 related patents that Professor Richard L. Atkinson's R&D work has built from 1995 until today, and a number of patents based on an antiviral compound isolated from sea cucumber extract. In addition to the R&D work around Ad-36, the company is also striving to find treatments for other virus related diseases, such as the common cold, for which Scandivir's patented sea cucumber extract has shown promising indications in previous studies.
