Verona Pharma in respiratory disease treatments developement
Verona Pharma, a developer of new therapeutic drugs used to treat respiratory diseases, has signed a new collaboration agreement to advance work on one of the three key programmes in its drug discovery and development portfolio.
Verona Pharma, a developer of new therapeutic drugs used to treat respiratory diseases, has signed a new collaboration agreement to advance work on one of the three key programmes in its drug discovery and development portfolio.
Verona Pharma has agreed new terms with the Scottish marine biotechnology company, GlycoMar under its Novel Anti-inflammatory Polysaccharides programme. The Company has identified a number of compounds as a result of cellular assays and is moving to experimental proof of concept studies in animals.
Using the results of such studies and further work with GlycoMar, Verona Pharma aims to find a suitable candidate for clinical proof of concept studies in man. The company has expectations that the project will provide novel treatments for respiratory conditions such as asthma and hay fever and for other diseases in, which inflammation has a substantial role.
GlycoMar sourced the compounds from marine animals and this work complements the work Verona Pharma is undertaking under a licence agreement with King's College London to identify NAIPs from the starfish family. Verona Pharma has been working with GlycoMar since November 2006 to carry out evaluation and testing of a wide range of potential NAIPs compounds, and has selected these compounds following indications of anti-inflammatory activity.
The scientific rationale behind Verona Pharma's NAIPs programme derives from studies of heparin, a polysaccharide found in mammals and that is widely used as an anti-coagulant (blood thinner). Heparin has been shown to have anti-inflammatory actions in various diseases but it cannot be widely used because its anti-coagulant action is an unwanted side effect in the treatment of allergic diseases. GlycoMar has identified in certain marine organisms natural sources of polysaccharides without anti-coagulant actions as an exciting new route for the development of novel drug treatments for inflammatory respiratory diseases.
The studies with GlycoMar under the NAIPs programme will run in parallel with Verona Pharma's RPL554 programme, which is currently being prepared for a Phase 1/2a clinical trial expected to commence in the near future. RPL554, invented by former Glaxo research director Sir David Jack, is under development to treat hay fever, asthma and other respiratory disorders. It does not involve steroids or beta- agonists, which both cause unwanted side effects.