Nautilus Biotech Announces Progress on Improved Interferon Beta for Multiple Sclerosis
PARIS, France. Nautilus Biotech today announced that it has developed enhanced IFNbeta molecules, engineered to have a substantially increased half-life.
The novel molecules, developed using Nautilus' proprietary technology for protein evolution, show significantly higher levels of stability in vitro compared to natural IFNbeta, including higher thermal stability as well as higher resistance to biological clearance. At the same time they elicit the specific activity levels of native IFNbeta.
"Greater stability is a key objective for the improvement of IFNbeta, as it will increase the half-life of the molecule in the body and decrease the frequency of repeat treatments. This is one of the most important clinical criteria for any next generation product for the treatment of MS. Nautilus' improved IFNbeta offers a significantly longer half-life which can be expected to translate into an improved PK profile. This enhancement has been achieved using Nautilus' mutagenesis approach, without the need of PEGylation, coating or any other chemical modification of the IFNbeta molecule," said Nautilus CSO Lila Drittanti.
Nautilus has created a portfolio of next generation therapeutic proteins with improved profiles. It is aggressively establishing a strong intellectual property position covering enhanced versions of these multibillion-dollar molecules and is rapidly moving these products towards initial clinical phases.
"The achievement of this key milestone is an important step in our strategy of becoming an early stage drug discovery and development company. Nautilus' next generation IFNbeta has been designed to satisfy a major unmet clinical need in this $2 billion market and demonstrates our ability to rapidly discover proprietary novel proteins with the potential to become the next generation of blockbusters," said Nautilus VP Strategy, Paul Martin.
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