EBI is developing drugs to protect patients from organ damage due to acute inflammation. The first organ that is being targeted is the kidney, and the first medical indications are coronary artery bypass graft ("CABG") surgery, septic shock, and transplantation. In each of these, the kidneys are susceptible to injury.
Conditions of various kinds, such as infection or blood loss, can cause the body’s immune system to overreact, leading to the systemic inflammatory response syndrome ("SIRS"). Ultimately SIRS can cause multiple organ damage. SIRS acts by triggering a series of chemical reactions in the body in a sequential, cascade-like process. In many cases, uncontrolled cascades result in death. The goal of the Company’s therapeutic development initiative is to modulate the sequence of reactions in the immune cascade with patented small molecule sub-fractions of human hormones that attenuate an uncontrolled immune response. EBI is exploring additional clinical applications of its drug candidates involving similar inflammatory pathologies related to radiation sickness, avian flu and anthrax infections.