Symbiotix announces US$2.3m award from NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Award enables the completion of key translational studies and the production of clinical trial material
Symbiotix Biotherapies has been awarded a US$2.3m phase two small business technology transfer (STTR) programme award from the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). The company is developing a novel class of molecular therapeutics from the human microbiome.
Symbiotix' lead clinical candidate, polysaccharide A (PSA), is the first molecule to emerge from the microbiome and the $2.3m NIH award enables the completion of key translational studies and the production of material needed to take into human clinical trials as a novel treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS), said Lloyd Kasper, Professor of Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College, and Co-Founder of Symbiotix.
PSA is a first-in-class oral therapy that works through a novel mechanism of action related to the activation of regulatory T cells, which exert an anti-inflammatory effect through the production of IL-10.
‘Current FDA-approved therapies for multiple sclerosis offer only partial benefits for the reduction of relapses and time to disability. However, all of these FDA-approved treatments have side-effects, some of which can be rather profound,’ said Professor Kasper.
‘We are developing PSA as a safe and effective new oral therapy for the more than 500,000 US patients with multiple sclerosis. We expect PSA to have few, if any, significant side-effects as it is derived from a commensal bacterial molecule that has evolved to modulate our immune system,’ he added.
‘Our receipt of this third NIH award enables us to move PSA towards human clinical studies as a first-in-class oral treatment for multiple sclerosis,’ said Nader Yaghoubi, MD, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer of Symbiotix. ‘We are grateful for the continued support by NIH as we translate years of promising academic research funded by NIH into a breakthrough therapy for MS and other immune-mediated diseases.’
