Nereus Pharmaceuticals

Nereus Pharmaceuticals is a pharmaceutical company focused on the development of natural products from marine microbial sources into small molecule human therapeutics. The major disease area addressed by Nereus is cancer. As of 2008, Nereus has no marketed products and its operating funds have been secured through several rounds of preferred stock sales.

Drug discovery

Until 2004, Nereus used methods licensed from the University of California, San Diego to retrieve and cultivate marine microorganisms, particularly bacteria in the Actinobacteria class and organisms belonging to Kingdom Fungi. Since 2004, the company has focused on commercializing identified bioactive natural products. As of mid-2007, two compounds were being examined in Phase I clincal trials: NPI-2358 and NPI-0052.

• NPI-2358 is a halimide derivative, halimide itself having been isolated from a member of genus Aspergillus. This compound appears to selectively disrupt tumour vasculature through interaction with microtubules.
• NPI-0052 is a natural product of Salinispora tropica, a member of the bacterial family Micromonosporaceae that was first isolated in 2002 and taxonomically identified genetically in 2005. NPI-0052 acts as a proteasome inhibitor.

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