These rights were acquired from Queen Mary, University of London. The conditions targeted by the inventions include osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and cardiac reperfusion (restoration of blood flow) injury in heart attack and stroke.
Unigene will gain rights to inventions already identified, and to future developments, in exchange for research funding of approximately $400,000 per year over the next three years, milestones based on clinical and commercial progress, and royalty payments representing a percentage of Unigene’s revenues.
The first program is a combination therapy using calcitonin and glucocorticoids for inflammatory diseases. According to Dr Mauro Perretti, professor of immunopharmacology at the university, this combination allows for a significant reduction in the dose of the glucocorticoid, which may decrease the severe side effects often associated with high-dose glucocorticoid treatment that currently inhibits their use for chronic treatment. Potential applications for this combination therapy include osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease.
Program two involves natural protein annexin and smaller peptide fragments of annexin that may be developed as a part of the treatment modalities for strokes and heart attacks. Unigene said that animal experiments have shown that these peptides are extremely effective at preventing the damage that occurs to blood vessels or the heart following removal of the blockage and reperfusion of the blood flow to the blocked areas. Treatment with the peptides may improve the clinical outcome to the patient following reperfusion.
“We believe that exploitation of this natural mechanism could lead to innovative anti-inflammatory therapeutics with better safety, since they will be mimicking the way our organs and tissues operate to regulate inflammation in the body. As well as treating the effects of heart attack, stroke and reperfusion injury, we envisage that we may be able to use this system for the prevention of post-surgical inflammation, and for treating or preventing inflammation that results from conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, asthma and septic shock,” said Professor Perretti.