Category: Our News

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,…

Challenge: PROTACs (PROteolysis TArgeting Chimeras) are bifunctional drugs that recruit a ubiquitin E3 ligase to a targeted protein, thereby catalyzing poly-ubiquitylation of the target and its subsequent degradation by the proteasome. PROTAC induced protein degradation offers advantages over classical enzyme inhibition: it acts via a catalytic instead of occupancy-based mechanism and shows superior efficacy with…

Challenge: G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are the largest family of cell surface receptors and represent an important class of targets that could be modulated by antibody (Ab)-based therapeutics. However, finding function-modifying antibodies against GPCRs remains a challenge due to the difficulty of preparing purified antigens, poor immunogenicity, small extracellular loops and low expression levels on cells.…

Challenge: Poor efficacy and unpredictable toxic effects are leading causes for the removal of drugs from the market. Many drugs act unpredictably in patients because the preclinical studies fail to accurately model human biology. In particular, the liver requires special attention as it is responsible for metabolizing drugs. Thus, improved liver models could identify and…

Challenge: Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress occurs when the folding of secreted proteins within the ER lumen is disturbed. The unfolded protein response (UPR) comprises several mechanisms. These adaptive responses attempt to overcome ER protein folding disturbances to promote cellular homeostasis and cell survival. ER stress and the UPR are implicated in many diseases such as…