Nivarta Inc is a drug discovery and diagnostics development company focused on developing protein therapeutics to treat metabolic disorders such as type II diabetes and obesity. The firm, in collaboration with renowned researchers, is focused on identifying novel gut secreted proteins that are involved in gastric bypass surgery mediated alleviation of diabetes and weight loss. There is a significant interest in the industry to develop alternative strategies based on protein therapeutics and small molecules that reproduce the anti-diabetic and anti-obesity effects of metabolic surgery. Nivarta has developed a novel microfluidics based platform that can be used to potentially screen tens of proteins at multiple concentrations in a single chip that fits within the dimensions of a microscope slide. This biochip is based on the Living Cell Array Technology (LCA) and is composed of an array of wells, with each well seeded with reporter cells, and individually addressable by microfluidics and monitored by an automated fluorescence microscopy system. A lack of information can often lead to erroneous conclusions on the functional role of a protein while combination of microfluidics based filtering and deeper interrogation using cell bioassays will dramatically accelerate the pace of discovering novel proteins involved in a disease state. Recently published scientific literature suggests that several proteins secreted from the gut could play an important role in mediating diabetes remission and weight loss following gastric bypass surgery. Nivarta is pursuing an approach based on genomics and targeted proteomics, in combination with in vitro and in vivo screening, to identify the differentially secreted proteins from the gut endocrine cell layer following surgery and develop these as therapeutics to treat metabolic disorders.
