SignaBlok, Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company founded in 2009 to develop novel mechanism-based targeted therapeutics and delivery nanosystems through the use of our revolutionary science and technologies.
About Our Founder
Alexander B. Sigalov, Ph.D. has over 35 years of extensive academic and industry experience. As a scientist with more than 85 scientific publications in different fields of his expertise, Dr. Sigalov is world-renowned for his leadership in biophysics, biochemistry, immunology, and cell biology. Currently, Dr. Sigalov is President and Chief Executive Officer of SignaBlok.
Prior to founding SignaBlok, Dr. Sigalov worked as a Senior Scientist in the Chemistry Department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he discovered an unusual biophysical phenomenon, the homooligomerization of intrinsically disordered proteins. Later, as a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, he used this discovery to develop a novel model of receptor signaling, the Signaling Chain HOmoOLigomerization (SCHOOL) model, and the related concept of therapeutic modulation of cell response.
Before moving to the United States, Dr. Sigalov founded the AMW Biomed Company in his native Russia where he developed and marketed the first diagnostic kits for heart disease and stroke serving more than 80 institutional customers. AMW Biomed also commercialized human apolipoproteins and was the official supplier of these proteins to the DAKO Company in Denmark.
Dr. Sigalov is the sole inventor of methods and compositions created through the SCHOOL platform that can be used to prevent or treat multiple serious diseases with unmet needs. He also developed integrated nanosystems for targeted delivery of drugs and imaging agents to sites of inflammation in vivo.
Dr. Sigalov holds a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry and M.S. in Chemistry from Moscow State University (Moscow, Russia).
Leading Innovative Science to Disruptive Therapies
Our novel model of cell signaling, the SCHOOL (Signaling Chain HOmoOLigomerization) model, developed by SignaBlok’s founder Alexander Sigalov, Ph.D., uncovers for the first time the mechanisms of signaling by cell surface receptors, a biological process that plays an important role in health and disease. This discovery opened new avenues for innovative drug development with applications in many serious diseases with unmet clinical needs.
Developing a New Class of Drugs – SCHOOL Peptide Therapeutics
SignaBlok’s elegant approach for modulating cell response is to disrupt functional coupling between two aspects of cell receptor machinery: recognition and signaling. This innovation represents a breakthrough to the modulation of receptor signaling, one of the most effective ways of preventing and treating human disease.
Mimicking the structures found in nature, the modulatory SCHOOL peptides can be rationally designed for nearly any receptor. They employ novel, ligand-independent mechanisms of action and possess unique and beneficial drug-like properties.
Capitalizing on a Billion-Year Development Process
Recent studies reveal that viruses use the SCHOOL-like mechanisms to inhibit receptors and enter human cells without triggering the self-defense response. SignaBlok is capitalizing upon a billion years of virus evolution to help revolutionize drug discovery science and develop new, disruptive therapies.
Developing Integrated Nanosystems for Targeted Delivery
SignaBlok’s multifunctional nanoparticles are designed to make drugs and imaging agents more targeted, more effective and less toxic. These nature-inspired nanosystems target macrophages, key inflammatory cells of the innate immunity, and can deliver imaging agents as well as therapies, ranging from small molecules to peptides and RNAs to sites of inflammation with applications in cancer, atherosclerosis, sepsis, rheumatoid arthritis, and other inflammation-associated diseases.
