BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — During the COVID-19 pandemic, people became more familiar with the drug-development process, particularly vaccines, because it was in the news. Names like Pfizer and Moderna became part of everyday conversation as the pandemic rolled on.

Companies like New Amsterdam Sciences (NAS) aren’t usually featured in the news, but they are there in the background of big pharma working every day to develop new drugs.

NAS — a clinical-stage bioscience company based at the Koffman Southern Tier Incubator at 120 Hawley St. in Binghamton — has been working throughout the pandemic on developing a drug that could help lessen the effects of COVID-19 and a number of other acute and chronic illnesses.

“What we have is a super antioxidant,” Michael Wilhelm, CEO of NAS, tells CNYBJ. Dubbed NAS150, the potential new drug treats inflammation by stopping the triggers of inflammation.

In COVID, as in many other illnesses, the body’s inflammatory response begins as soon as the virus reaches the cells of the body. For some people, that inflammatory response is hyperactive, Wilhelm says. Called a cytokine storm, it’s a hyper-immune response that actually makes it less effective at fighting illness. When it happens, those are the people who become very ill and end up hospitalized, he says.

“What our drug does is keep everything in balance,” he says. “It’s a modulator of the immune response.” For people with COVID, it could be used as an early treatment to keep the immune response exactly where it needs to be to fight off the virus, he notes.

Of course, in order for that to happen, NAS needs to continue to study the drug and, if the data looks promising, partner with a pharmaceutical company to bring the drug to market.

NAS is now moving into phase two of this process. The first phase included safety studies and determining there are no serious adverse events (SAE). This next phase will include a larger study with hundreds of patients who are ill. 

“Now it’s about going into humans affected with that disease,” Wilhelm notes.

As a biotechnology company, NAS doesn’t have the research and development funds that large pharmaceutical companies have. In fact, most pharmaceutical companies have lowered their R&D budgets and let smaller companies like NAS take the lead on developing new drugs, Wilhelm says. Then the big companies come on board when something looks promising.

In the meantime, New Amsterdam Sciences, a wholly owned subsidiary of NAS Bioholdings, is on its own to raise the funds needed for the clinical studies. As part of its campaign to raise capital to fund phase two of its NAS150 study, the company has a bridge loan between $1 million and $2 million while it gets ready for an initial public offering it hopes will generate between $15 million and $20 million. Wilhelm expects the IPO to happen sometime between mid-April and June.

If all goes according to plan, NAS could wrap up phase two of the study by September but will have data available before then to share with pharmaceutical companies. “We are speaking with some pharma right now,” Wilhelm says. “It looks very good.” 

Not only does NAS150 look promising for the treatment of COVID and prevention of long COVID complications in patients, it’s also “variant agnostic” meaning its effectiveness won’t be diminished by any new variants that might come along, he says. Additionally, NAS150 looks promising to help treat other conditions including the flu and pneumonia. 

The company will soon start a study on the drug’s effectiveness in treating rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic autoimmune inflammatory disorder that leads to a progressive loss of joint tissue and function that can rapidly diminish mobility and quality of life in patients. NAS is collaborating with the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom on that effort. Studies will be performed designed to produce additional data demonstrating therapeutic benefit of targeting inflammation caused by uncontrolled neutrophil-derived reactive oxygen species (or ROS) production in joints, NAS said in a release. 

As things ramp up with the study and the IPO, Wilhelm says he will be growing his current staff of three by adding a chief financial officer and other executive-team members.

NAS (newamsterdamsciences.com), which started in 2014, does not operate its own lab. Rather it contracts out to research organizations and scientists. The lean operating formula allows the company to put most of its capital directly into funding studies, Wilhelm says.

Looking ahead, he would like to see more businesses like his in the Binghamton area where they will benefit from the area’s colleges and students. 

“I’d love to be part of a team that establishes a biotech incubator for this area,” he says. “I’d like to be part of something that advances science here.”