Domainex Secures £1.4m Biomedical Catalyst Award
Domainex Ltd announced that its lead compound has demonstrated a more potent effect in a key model of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) than either roflumulast or a p38 inhibitor. It has also successfully won a £1.4m Biomedical Catalyst Award to support further development towards Phase I clinical studies.
Roflumilast is a PDE4 inhibitor, known to have clinical benefit in COPD patients, and the p38 inhibitor is currently in late-stage clinical development. In the present study, Domainex compared the effect of oral doses of its compound with the same oral doses of either roflumilast or a p38 inhibitor in a COPD model that is widely-recognised to be the ‘gold standard’ pre-clinical study. The Domainex compound showed more than twice the effect of the comparator drugs in reducing the cigarette smoke-induced influx of inflammatory cells, particularly neutrophils, into the lung.
Domainex has previously shown that its inhibitors of TBK1 and IKKε are potent anti-inflammatory agents, which can inhibit signaling pathways activated by Toll-like Receptors and IL-17. This data suggests that these compounds may have utility in COPD and other inflammatory diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and psoriasis.
Dr Trevor Perrior, Research Director at Domainex, said: “These are very exciting results which suggest that our programme could lead to an oral drug for the treatment of COPD with a much better anti-inflammatory effect than existing medicines. This could provide the first truly-effective disease-modifying treatment for COPD, which would have an enormous impact on the management of this debilitating condition.”
Other news from the department business & finance
