A new class of immunoregulatory therapeutics
The Company has licensed a family of chemically synthesized biomolecules (the "Compounds") that regulate the immune response. These biomolecules modulate the activity of the immune system by altering the production or activity of one or more of its component parts. When challenged by a traumatic insult such as ischemic reperfusion as a result of transplantations or CABG, or bacterial infection, the body defends itself by producing a range of biochemicals that aim to control the tissue damage or infection. Normally, these biochemicals initiate a cascade of events that are protective; that is, they limit tissue damage or infection. However, if there is an aberrant or disrupted response, these same biochemicals can have unwanted, damaging or life threatening clinical effects and lead to significant complications in the disease state.
The Compounds have exhibited various properties and capacities to modulate the cascade of the immune response in isolated cells and in various animal models of disease. The Compounds thus represent a new class of therapeutic agents and can be described as having modulating or controlling functions over the immune response - a capability that makes them clinically relevant for many important disease states characterized by unbridled immune activation. Modulating these multiple pathways should enable physicians to systematically bring an overactive immune system back into homeostasis (balance). In contrast, conventional drugs typically work on just one component of one pathway (e.g. by inhibiting one particular enzyme or counteracting one particular inflammatory mediator), and for this reason may have more limited efficacy compared to EA-230.