Category: Our News

Challenge: The popularity of therapeutic proteins has recently increased mostly due to their broad applicability, but the druggable space for biologics is still restricted to extracellular targets. Indeed, the number of potential targets either secreted or with extracellular domains represents only one-third of the proteome, thus significantly restricting attainable pathways. In parallel, intracellular delivery methods…

Challenge: Retinal degenerative diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration and glaucoma, are the leading causes of vision loss and affect tens of millions of individuals in the world. Emerging solutions with nucleic acids and therapeutic genes show promise. However, there remains a void in effective and non-invasive drug delivery systems for the back of the…

Challenge: Of the top 10 most fatal illnesses in the world, Alzheimer’s disease is the only one for which there is currently no disease-modifying therapy available. Abnormal clusters of toxic amyloid protein fragments build up between nerve cells in the brain leading to impaired memory. The current therapies in development are biologics, antibodies and peptides…

Challenge: Many cancers are treated with cocktails of chemotherapeutic drugs designed to prevent growth and spread of cancerous cells. Chemotherapy damages healthy cells, causing undesired side effects such as myelosuppression and cardiotoxicity. Localized drug therapy, if appropriately delivered could have a major impact on quality of life and treatment efficacy. Solution : The lead investigator has…

Challenge: Acute Liver Failure (ALF) is an extremely severe, progressive syndrome resulting from a sudden insult on the liver that exceeds the organ’s innate regenerative capacity. No effective treatment exists for ALF except for liver transplant, which is limited by organ shortage, heavy morbidity and need of lifelong immunosuppression treatments. Temporary replacement of liver functions…

Challenge: Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease that manifests itself as scaly patches, especially on the elbows, knees and scalp. The skin undergoes a profound modification of the epidermis, with an infiltration of inflammatory cells and increased proliferation of skin cells. Inflammatory modulators called Interleukin (IL) -17 and -23 have been identified as key…

Challenge: Musculoskeletal diseases represent the second largest contributor to disability worldwide (WHO). Despite efforts made in the past few years, drugs development in bone therapy is challenging. Indeed, bone is a difficult tissue to drug due to its material properties and limited vascularity, requiring high drug doses and frequent administration to achieve efficacy. Most FDA…

Challenge: While small molecules have delivered great value for targets featuring small binding cavities, their use against challenging targets with featureless interfaces are quite limited. Although such targets are better tackled by biologics, such compounds usually have poor cell penetration and limited oral bioavailability. There is thus a need to design biologics, such as peptides,…

Challenge: Encycle Therapeutics has developed a novel synthetic platform to design enhanced peptide macrocycles called nacellins. Nacellins molecules approximate the dimensions of beta turns extremely well and, although reminiscent of conventional cyclic peptides, exhibit substantially improved passive membrane permeability, as well as stability in the gut and inside cells. However, further chemical modifications of nacellins…

Competition:Programme EXPLORE 2013Funding:$499,000 / 2 years Platform technology aimed at increasing the half–life of small biologics by conjugating FcRn-binding molecules. Protein-based therapeutics, also called biologics, have recently made significant inroads into the pharmaceutical market, and are being used to treat chronic diseases and cancer. In addition to acting potently and specifically on their molecular targets,…