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Phylogica demonstrates biological activity for its lead compounds in its Rheumatoid Arthritis programme
PERTH, Australia | October 10, 2007 | Phylogica Limited (ASX: PYC) announced today that it has demonstrated biological activity with its lead RA compounds developed during its Commercial Ready grant funded program.
These hits, generated against the extracellular CD40 Ligand target (CD40L), were able to successfully block the binding of a neutralising CD40L antibody to its target. Moreover, this antagonism was independently confirmed in assays where Phylomer® peptides were shown to inhibit functional activity of CD40L in living cells.
“This result demonstrates that Phylomer peptides are specific and bind tightly to the RA disease target”, said Phylogica CEO, Dr Stewart Washer.
“We are also excited that we have made such significant progress on this important project in such a short period of time, paving the way for testing some of these candidates in animal models of RA in collaboration with the University of Melbourne next year” he added.
“Phylogica has now developed a comprehensive portfolio of Phylomer® drugs in the areas of burns treatment, cardiac ischemia, stroke/head trauma and RA, valuable markets with strong demands for new drugs”. Phylogica’s VP Drug Discovery, Dr Paul Watt, commented that “Our hits not only block the activity of CD40L, but they also bind this target with sufficient affinity to compete with well characterised antibodies specific for that target. This has important implications for dosing and cost of goods of any subsequent drug, since these non-optimised Phylomer® hits show encouraging biological efficacy. We have now confirmed the RA hits announced in May are biologically active in cell based assays, clearing the way for progression into animal disease model testing.
” These data now mean that Phylogica has demonstrated biological efficacy against both intracellular and extracellular disease targets, making the Phylomer technology one of the most versatile drug discovery platforms currently available.
These results are being presented at BioPartnering Europe in London this week – this presentation will be available for download from our website www.phylogica.com. The next step is to prepare the lead molecules for animal efficacy testing in 2008 with our collaborator, Prof John Hamilton at the University of Melbourne. This CD40L target is also a validated disease target in many other inflammatory diseases.
These include diabetes, IBD, uveitis, thyroiditis, lupus and nephritis. An anti-CD40L mAb (IDEC-131) was tested in clinical trials for Multiple Sclerosis, psoriasis, Crohn’s disease, and idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura.
The attached figures show: A) Phylomer peptide blocking binding of CD40L to neutralising anti-CD40L antibody and B) Phylomer peptide blocking of biological activity of CD40L in primary white blood cells.
B) Dose response curve of Phylomer® peptide, PYC18 inhibiting expression of CD40L-induced CD86 on primary B cells
A) Phylomer® peptide, PYC18 blocks binding of CD40L to neutralising anti CD40L antibody
Phylogica Ltd (ASX:PYC) (www.phylogica.com)
Phylogica is a biopharmaceutical company with an advanced technology (known as Phylomer® peptides) that is being applied to develop a new class of drugs for emergency treatment of burns, traumatic brain injury and other inflammatory diseases including rheumatoid arthritis.
Phylogica was founded by the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in Perth (www.ichr.uwa.edu.au) and the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, United States (www.fccc.edu).
About Phylomer® peptides
Phylomer® peptides are stable fragments of naturally-occurring proteins with the ability to bind tightly to target proteins and inactivate them as a result. Phylomer® peptides can be selected for activity against specific disease target proteins. The properties of Phylomer® peptides make them attractive as cost effective alternatives to antibodies (a proven multi-billion drug class) and also work against disease targets that antibodies cannot reach (inside the cell). Phylogica's proprietary Phylomer® libraries are collections of millions of Phylomer® peptides that represent a source of drug leads which can be used for multiple diseases.
SOURCE: PHYLOGICA LIMITED
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