C4X breakthrough in psoriasis treatment
DRUG development pioneer C4X Discovery has found compounds which could lead to effective treatment of the skin disease psoriasis, estimated to be worth $6bn a year.
Its small molecule battle against Interleukin-17 (IL-17) will also help in the treatment of psoriatic arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis, together estimated also to be worth a further $6bn per annum.
The Manchester company, which recently announced advances in drugs to combat diabetes and inflammation caused by diseases like Multiple Sclerosis, says it has shown again that its technology can “significantly outperform conventional drug-discovery targets when it comes to generating novel agents for challenging disease targets”.
In the case of IL-17, it has been a protein-protein interaction which has typically proved difficult to target with small-molecule drugs.
IL-17 is implicated in multiple inflammatory and autoimmune diseases and is the subject of numerous clinical studies.
Attempts to target IL-17 are largely based around monoclonal antibodies, which have the necessary size required to inhibit the IL-17/IL-17R engagement.
Historically, identifying small molecules that specifically inhibit the IL-17 pathway has been extremely challenging, but C4X’s technology has identified small molecules that can selectively block the IL-17/IL-17R interaction with high potency.
“The first significant market to be targeted by IL-17 antibodies is psoriasis,” C4X said. “Other significant IL-17 market opportunities include psoriatic arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis.”
C4X chief executive Piers Morgan said: “We continue to expand our proprietary pipeline by using C4XD’s highly effective conformational design technology, and our IL-17 programme is the latest addition.
“We are rapidly building a portfolio of highly attractive programmes in areas of significant unmet medical need with large target markets. Our technology can be applied broadly to generate drug candidates in a fraction of the time and cost incurred using conventional methods.”
