Irritation is sort of a hearth you simply can’t put out—inflammatory problems are power circumstances in any case. If your home is ablaze and you realize a gasoline leak is the trigger, dousing the complete house isn’t a focused method to cease what’s feeding the flames, says John Puisis, co-founder and CEO of Cour Prescribed drugs. He compares his startup’s medicine to stopping hearth on the supply.
“We go into the basement, and we flip off the gasoline valve fully,” Puisis mentioned.
Cour’s know-how discovered early validation within the arms of a giant pharmaceutical firm that picked up one of many biotech’s packages and is at the moment testing it in mid-stage scientific trials. Now the Chicago-based startup desires to do the identical with its inner pipeline and it has raised $105 million for its plans. In doing so, Cour goals to indicate how its strategy to irritation stands other than the corporate’s immunology friends.
One of many hottest areas of autoimmune illness analysis entails harnessing regulatory T cells, or Tregs. These cells in our our bodies counteract extreme immune responses. A slew of Treg startups—Sonoma Biotherapeutics, Gentibio, Abata Therapeutics, Quell Therapeutics, and Tr1X—are engineering Tregs to deal with a wide range of inflammation-driven circumstances. The jury remains to be out on these experimental cell therapies, which have restricted, if any, scientific information thus far. However Puisis, whose expertise contains serving as CEO of autoimmune dysfunction drug developer Tolera Therapeutics, mentioned one drawback with Tregs is that immune suppression from these engineered cells can unfold past their targets, resulting in negative effects.
“What’s attention-grabbing with us versus the others—I gained’t identify them—they’re doing generalized Tregs, you possibly can truly get off-target spreading,” Puisis mentioned. “We’re mainly telling the physique ‘don’t assault these cells anymore.’”
Cour doesn’t engineer cell therapies. The corporate works with nanoparticles that trick the physique into pondering that they’re cells. Inside of those particles is an antigen for a selected autoimmune illness. The composition of all Cour drug candidates is identical, except the disease-causing antigen encapsulated inside. Cour’s nanoparticles are about the identical dimension as a cell, which is necessary as they flow into all through the physique. Too massive, they usually might trigger clotting issues, Puisis mentioned. Too small, and the immune system gained’t acknowledge them.
Recognition is essential to how Cour’s therapies reprogram the immune system, Puisis mentioned. Immune cells that present surveillance for the immune system choose up the nanoparticles and take them to the spleen, which makes white blood cells, and the liver, which performs a task within the adaptive immune response. Launched in these organs with none accompanying inflammatory indicators, the immune system perceives the antigens as belonging to the physique. The physique then produces Tregs that migrate to the location of illness to tamp down immune responses to that antigen.
Cour’s know-how is predicated on many years of analysis by Stephen Miller, a professor of microbiology-immunology at Northwestern College. The startup’s preliminary focus was celiac illness, an immune response to gluten in sure meals. Preclinical analysis offered and revealed in 2015 described how nanoparticles may be generated from biocompatible compounds and used to ship an antigen to revive immune tolerance. Quickly after, Takeda Pharmaceutical started a partnership on the Cour celiac illness remedy. Takeda licensed this remedy in 2019 and is now accountable for its scientific improvement. In the meantime, Ironwood Prescribed drugs holds an choice to license a distinct Cour remedy for main biliary cholangitis, a uncommon autoimmune illness affecting the bile ducts of the liver.
Puisis isn’t ruling out extra pharma alliances, however for now, he mentioned Cour is specializing in creating its personal pipeline. Cour’s nanoparticles can encapsulate a number of antigens to handle ailments pushed by a couple of antigen, resembling kind 1 diabetes. That illness and the uncommon muscle dysfunction myasthenia gravis are Cour’s lead indications. Cour chosen these ailments as a result of the few obtainable therapies for them depart sufferers wanting for one thing higher, Puisis mentioned.
Drug hunters have pursued antibody therapies for each ailments. The 2022 approval of Provention Bio’s antibody Tzield made that remedy the primary FDA-approved remedy for delaying kind 1 diabetes development. Sanofi acquired Provention for $2.9 billion final 12 months. In myasthenia gravis, Argenx markets two antibody fragments, Vyvgart and Hytrulo. Final 12 months, UCB gained FDA approval for 2 myasthenia gravis therapies, Rystiggo and Zilbrysq. Whereas Rystiggo is an antibody that works equally to Argenx’s medicine, Zilbrysq is a peptide that addresses a distinct goal.
The permitted kind 1 diabetes and myasthenia gravis therapies are power remedies, like common functions of fireside suppression that don’t extinguish the hearth for good. Along with probably higher efficacy, Cour goals to supply sufferers long-lasting results. Puisis mentioned preclinical analysis suggests the impact of Cour’s therapies final for the lifetime of the animal. To be truthful, builders of engineered Tregs additionally say their therapies might provide long-lasting results. The sturdiness of each kinds of remedies nonetheless have to be proven in human testing. However one benefit that Cour might have over Tregs is manufacturability. Making a remedy from nanoparticles is cheaper and extra simply scalable in comparison with engineering a affected person’s cells or donor cells into cell therapies.
Cour’s Sequence A financing was co-led by Lumira Ventures and Alpha Wave Ventures. Different traders embrace Roche Enterprise Fund; Pfizer, by way of its Pfizer Breakthrough Development Initiative; Bristol Myers Squibb; Angelini Ventures; and the JDRF T1D Fund. Puisis mentioned the financing will help the development of each of its packages by way of Section 2a scientific improvement. As for Cour’s identify, Puisis mentioned it’s spinoff of the phrase “braveness” and is the brainchild of one of many startup’s scientists.
“You want numerous braveness to be in biotech and to be within the discovery enterprise,” Puisis defined.
Photograph by Flickr consumer Peter Hill by way of a Artistic Commons license
